I very well remember the morning when the post brought me an advance
copy of the first number of Mr. C. B. Fry’s _Magazine_.
One saw at once, as the public has since seen, that the periodical
struck a new note in regard to matters of sport. It was to be both
practical and idealistic, sport in the realm of action was to stand
side by side with sport in the sphere of thought. Mr. Begbie sounded
the keynote, in his beautiful inaugural poem--when the clean, strong
body sings a hymn of praise and thankfulness for its splendour of
strength and health; because the joy of physical achievement is so
intense, because the currents of the blood run fast and free.
It is a curious fact in life that a fine and noble thing in itself
nearly always harbours or begets an ugly parasite. No plant grows
unhampered by the insect world, a filthy mildew--so the curator of a
famous picture gallery told me the other day, will appear mysteriously
upon the finest canvas.
In particular, certain phases of sport to-day present the observer
with a curious spectacle. There is a monstrous liaison, a horrid
entanglement between sport and drink!
It is as well to put it quite bluntly at the beginning. If an
unpleasant fact is not stated in the frankest way, it loses its appeal
to the hearer. The man in the street, gets up and strangles a
half-statement with the flippancy of a catch-penny juggler at a
country fair. One is not heard.
I say that a grave danger menaces modern sport and that the danger is
just this....
The more popular games of England are being disturbed and discredited
in a marked manner by the amount of drinking--plain, vulgar _excess_
in alcohol--which surrounds them and follows in their train. A great
number of sportsmen know this perfectly well and genuinely deplore it,
but I am not aware that the subject has been properly ventilated as
yet, save perhaps by “temperance” cranks and prejudiced or ignorant
people, who hide a polemic puritanism under the banner of a misused
word.
Some time ago I had occasion to spend a night in a large manufacturing
district in the North of England. I put up at a local hotel.
It is a large place standing in the four cross roads where electric
trams stopped--a definite centre of the town. The landlord is the
secretary of a most prosperous local cricket club, he is intimately
concerned with the local football--Association--and is a prominent
swimmer.
At all times of the year the district is intensely interested in
sport, and the hotel is a headquarters of it. The walls of bars and
smoking-rooms are covered with photographs of this or that local team,
the whole talk is redolent of sport--and your Northerner or Midlander
is generally the keenest sportsman of all.
It was quite obvious that this hotel was extremely and noticeably
prosperous, everything proclaimed it. I was introduced by the
landlord, a thoroughly good fellow, to various local football players
and swimmers. The talk of the smoke-room was entirely occupied with
sport, there was a real knowledge of, and love for games. One heard
shrewd and penetrating criticism, one saw fine healthy-looking men
who were certainly no mere machines for the decomposing of their
lunch and dinner! In fact, the evening was thoroughly congenial.
Next morning after breakfast, I smoked my pipe in the bar parlour. At
one side of the place was a counter which formed a barrier between it
and the ordinary tap-room. Three young and powerful men came in--it
was about 9.30 in the morning. They asked the barmaid for a drink I
had never heard of--“three warm sodas, please.” The girl opened three
bottles of soda, poured some hot water into each glass and gave it to
the customers.
When they had gone, I asked her what was the meaning of this.
“Oh,” she said, “there was a football supper last night These lads
were all drunk. They often come for a warm soda in the morning, it
sobers them.”
The remark was a prelude to some interesting information. The girl was
a native of the North. She had been in the bars of several Lancashire
public-houses; what she told me was simply a dreary record of personal
experience. In effect, it was this: After a big football match the
hotels were always crowded, packed so closely that it was difficult
for a late-comer to enter. On such occasions the staff of pot-boys
and men to keep order was recruited from the stables. Drunkenness,
distinct drunkenness, was very common. The members of the two teams
were often the core of a welter of riot. The players themselves were
treated by their admirers until they frequently became intoxicated.
Quarrels and rows of all sorts were of almost momentary occurrence. “I
hate all big sporting days,” she said. “You’ve no idea what we girls
have to put up with. They all seem to go mad. But there, the takings
are enormous so I suppose sport’s good for trade!”
I tell this little story not because I was unaware of the facts
before, but because a “picture” is always valuable in making a point,
and because a coincidence has provided me with this picture at the
moment when I am writing on this subject.
Every one knows the state of things in this regard thoroughly well. It
isn’t sporadic--it’s _systematic_. And day by day in many districts,
you may witness the paradox of a man who is above his fellows in the
fine cultivation and training of his body, using his gifts in the
finest way--and drugging himself with poison directly afterwards. And
not only does the athlete himself do this, but his influence has a
far-reaching effect upon others. The hero corrupts innumerable valets,
and what should be an uplifting thing for the spectators, becomes, in
the nick of time and in the punctual place, an opportunity for
unbridled indulgence.
Nearly every footballer knows that what I say is true, and still the
thing grows. It is not too much to say that, at the moment, drink
stands before the progress of popular sport like an armed assassin in
a narrow path. I shall give other instances in a moment, but at this
point it is proper to explain that one is no fanatic. Sport calls
aloud for temperance to-day, but sport is not concerned with
teetotalism. Every active sportsman must cultivate each sense to its
highest power, that is a condition of success in sport. But there is a
sixth sense, not sufficiently recognized by writers attacking an evil
no less than by sportsmen who concur in it.
It is the sense of proportion.
Nothing is more necessary than “proportion” in the consideration of
such a question as this, a subject of supreme importance in modern
sporting life; yet to-day the sense of proportion has been lost by
sportsmen and adherents of sport alike. Long ago Plato pointed out
that we shall never have perfect men until we have perfect
circumstances, and it is the people who condemn a good thing because
of its occasional misuse who destroy their own case. Alcohol is a
good thing, sport is a good thing, together they are harmless even;
but moderation has been overstepped and we are in the middle of a
definite and serious crisis.
A _Blue-book_ of statistics of crime has just been issued. From it I
find that drunkenness is greatest in the great football centres of the
North and of Wales. The thirstiest parts of the country are those in
which football is the most eagerly played and watched, in which
innumerable local sporting papers are published, where the man in the
street is a football expert. This is at least significant, though so
patent and obvious is the evil that it almost seems a waste of time to
pile proof on proof. Nevertheless, before I turn to drink in
connection with other varieties of sport, it will be as well to give
all my evidence.
A well-known North-country baronet, a famous sportsman in his day, an
ex-member of one of His Majesty’s ministries and at this moment an
enthusiastic volunteer, told me, a short time ago, that in his
district the abuse of drink was ruining local sport. “Decent people no
longer care to attend football matches,” he said; “the element of
drink and ruffianism is becoming too much in evidence. A new class of
spectators has been created, men who care little or nothing for the
sport itself, but who use a match as a mere opportunity and an excuse
for drinking.”
A shipowner, a member of the present Parliament, who has large
interests in Yorkshire and the further North, entirely endorses these
remarks. “If you go into the cheaper parts of the field at any big
match in our parts, you’ll see that every other man has a bottle of
spirits in his jacket pocket which he drinks at half-time. And
afterwards--well, the brewers that have tied houses anywhere near a
football ground know that they have a gold mine. A brewery will pay
almost any sum to secure a free house in such a position.”
Finally, a well-known Northern clergyman, a relative of my own and a
fine sportsman in his time, albeit an old man now, writes to me as
follows: “I am glad you are writing on this question. The wives of the
colliers and mill-hands in my district all tell me the same story.
They say that the Saturday afternoon matches are a curse to the home.
It is not the few pence that the husbands spend for admission to the
field which matter, but it is the drinking that follows, often
protracted till late at night. For my own part, as a small protest, I
absolutely refuse to subscribe to local football clubs in any way.
They are becoming centres and occasions of vulgar vice. Such money as
I have to spare for sporting objects I give entirely to cricket.”
It is a far cry from football to golf. At first glance any one would
say that of all games golf is the most free from any taint of
attendant excess in drink. This is not so. The evil is less
widespread, just as the game claims fewer adherents; the class of men
who can afford golf is not a class with many temptations to
drunkenness; women play the game and their presence is a safeguard.
But the evil exists nevertheless, and this is the measure of it.
In the famous clubs, where all the great players go, drinking to
excess is an unknown thing, of course. But during the last few years,
especially in the South and West of England, many small clubs have
been started which are almost entirely supported by the residents of
the country towns near which they are situated. And I have not the
least hesitation in saying--however much my statements may be
combated--that many of these clubs are becoming little better than
shebeens for discreet and comfortable over-indulgence in drink.
No one will attempt to deny that the usual football match is regarded
by thousands of people as a mere alcoholiday. I am certain that many
people will attempt to deny what I am going to say about mushroom
golf clubs. When one frankly points out this or that abuse existing
among the middle and upper middle classes, these classes always become
shrill in their defence. There is a sense that while it is a duty to
expose the faults of the poorer people, amusing to attack the follies
of the “smart set,” to write of the failings of the intermediate class
is to let the cat out of the bag. One may give the cat’s tail a pinch
to let people know she is there, but that is all.
But I am writing for only one class, the fellowship of true sportsmen.
In many of the smaller golf clubs drinking has almost destroyed the
game itself. A comfortable club-house is erected, far more money is
spent on it than upon the links themselves, and men spend day after
day playing bridge and--_drinking_!
Golf becomes what Napoleon called a “_fable convenu_,” and while there
is generally a knot of real and enthusiastic players, there is always
a large residuum of idle members who turn a splendid game into an
excuse of indulgence in drink. These are the people who imagine that
they would lose caste if they entered any of the hotels of the small
town in which they live, and so the local golf club becomes the
substitute.
I have a picture in my mental vision of a man, once an athlete of
great renown, for many years after that a good sportsman. Now he is
supposed to devote himself entirely to golf--for he is no longer a
young man. This erstwhile athlete spends all his days in a certain
golf club. He is the oracle of the place. He plays very little, but
rests upon past laurels. And all day long he drinks, drinks, drinks.
He has gathered a society of kindred spirits round him, and, from the
sportsman’s point of view, the club, never eminent in any way, has
ceased to exist. It is atrophied by alcohol--though its finances are
in a flourishing condition owing to the fact that there is no licence
to provide for, and the profits on drinks amount to about thirty-three
per cent.
I am not trying to draw a general conclusion out of a particular
instance. Any one who really cares for sport and has a deep sense of
its high mission and place in life will bear me out. Many of the
smaller and less-known golf clubs are nothing more or less than
discreet drinking-places, secure from observation and shielded from
adverse comment under the too comprehensive ægis of “Sport.”
In my time I have had something to do with pugilism, and here is
another sport which, especially among its professional exponents, is
being ruined and degraded by drink. One of the most pathetic
experiences I have ever had was to watch the utter hopeless downfall
of a famous boxer some years ago. His name was a household word, he
was an American negro and one of the simplest, kindest, most
thoughtless children of nature who ever breathed. I never knew a more
sunny, genial creature. I saw him, during one year, succumb to the
temptations of drink thrust at him on all sides by admiring “sports.”
I was with him a week or two before he died from drink.
I remember, as a young man, going to an ice carnival at Hengler’s
Circus with one of the cleverest middle-weight boxers of modern times.
He had invited many of his friends of the ring, and there was a big
supper afterwards. Of course none of the men were in training, and
they were surrounded by the usual crew of wealthy wasters who counted
it an honour and privilege to ply them with liquor.
I am not going to make a picture of that occasion for you, but one
final scene still remains very vividly in my memory. A month before I
had seen my middle-weight friend in the ring. His proportions were
perfect, the muscles rippled easily and smoothly, he had the clear
eyes of youth that Homer (supreme chronicler of fights) sings of. To
look at him made one glad to be young and strong, to know that one
was a man, with cool blood and a quiet heart.
On the night of the supper I saw him lie like a log. All the soul had
gone out of his face, the pig and the wolf struggled for mastery in
that debauched mask, and a tipsy young stockbroker was pouring a
bottle of claret over the boxer’s crumpled shirt front!
In the early part of last February, I spent part of an afternoon in an
up-stairs room at the National Sporting Club. An Oxford friend, one of
the most promising amateur feather-weights of the day, was having a
practice spar with a professional. After the bout, we went down-stairs
to the bar--always the bar!--and I talked to the boxer. He told me the
same story, the story I already knew: Drink, drink, drink. It
permeates pugilism, it makes it a sport which is looked upon with
suspicion by many people--simply because of its associations, simply
because of the blight of alcohol which surrounds it and seems
inseparable from it.
England is a nation of sportsmen still. We take sport as seriously, we
pursue it as keenly as ever did the Greeks themselves. But we are
allowing this danger and reproach of drink to be mingled with some of
our national pastimes. There is no doubt whatever about it, and, as I
see it, the reason is this.
We are forgetting to idealize sport, to realize what it _means_ no
less than what it _is_.
I feel sure that if we can once get back to that attitude, the drink
trouble will cease automatically. No man can be a thorough sportsman
without a latent sense of the inherent fineness and dignity of sport.
We want an organized campaign to wake up that latent sense!
Historical analogies may be out of fashion in some departments of life
with which I am not here concerned. In sporting matters they are, and
ought to be, very valuable in helping to keep the ideal of sport at a
high level.
For example, among the finest sportsmen of all time, the ancient
Greeks, who were the finest athletes? History tells us they were the
Hellenes. They were mostly townsmen living in a country of dense
cultivation and beholden to the gymnasium and the palæstra for their
recreation, the noblest outcome of which was the Olympian meeting.
The greatest historian of Greek life and thought points out that the
Hellenes “were always abstemious,” and they were the leading athletes
of the world.
The Macedonian ideal was quite different. The Macedonians despised
bodily training in the way of abstinence, and drank to excess. They
were hunters and open-air people, they reproduced the life of the
savage or natural man with artificial improvements, but when they came
into the palæstra they were nowhere at all. A century ago in England
many a rollicking county squire would spend a day in the saddle and a
night under the table, but he could not have run a mile in five
minutes to save his life.
Alexander the Great himself despised the abstemiousness of the Greek
athletes, and though he thought in continents, he drank in oceans, and
died in a drinking bout. He was a mighty hunter and fighter, but he
was not a true sportsman, because he despised the control and
self-denial which a man must practise if he would earn that dignity
and title.
These last paragraphs may savour a little of the don, and possibly
suggest an emanation from the shrunk skull of the pedant. I hope not,
but believe me, they are proper to my purpose. After the brief summary
I have given of the actual position, it is helpful to survey the whole
question from a wider point of view than that of the immediate
present.
Let us consider the sporting history of a time much nearer our own,
the Elizabethan age. Every one was a sportsman then, because every one
was practised in the use of the national arms and was a potential
soldier--as the hidalgoes of the Armada found in 1588. But
nevertheless, nobody was a teetotaller. “Temperance drinks” were not
invented, because most people knew how to be sportsmen and temperate
as well.
Shakespeare took ale for breakfast. Drake, Raleigh and Sir Humphrey
Gilbert put to sea with barrels of beer for the sailors--“for ale went
to sea in those days,” yet every peasant of the country-side was still
expert with crossbow and English yew. In that high age drink had not
become a fungus at the root of a goodly tree.
A great many sportsmen to-day drink far more than the ordinary person
who knows nothing of them but their achievements in this or that game
would suppose.
The quantity of alcohol consumed by some sportsmen who are eminent in
their respective sports would often both astonish and alarm the
layman. There is a very simple pathological reason which explains the
fact. Oxygen is needed for the destruction of alcohol, as for the
destruction of most poisons. Hence it follows that the athlete can get
rid of his quota of alcohol without _immediate_ deteriorating results.
Last year I was at Oxford during eights’ week, the time of strict
training. The stroke of a college boat, by no means an abstemious man
at ordinary times, had been compelled to forego his usual potations.
But there came what is known as a “port night,” an evening when the
crew were allowed to drink a certain quantity of port. The stroke
exceeded this quantity, went back to his rooms, became thoroughly
intoxicated and had to be helped to bed. Next day his boat made a
bump. A strong man--an athlete--can and very often does drink far more
than an ordinary man without any apparent loss of power _at the time_.
Because there is no apparent deterioration the subject imagines that
none is taking place, and the ordinary non-athletic person will find
it difficult to realize that when I say that many fine sportsmen drink
too much, I am speaking literal truth.
How often do we not observe that a sportsman has a brilliant and
public career for a time and then suddenly disappears from the first
rank--“drops out,” and is no more heard of? His sporting life is
brilliant but it is short.
Yet there is no natural reason why the athlete’s athletic life should
be a short one. Muscles and tissues do not easily wear out from
continuous and careful action. Any doctor will admit as much. Indeed,
an alert and healthy brain with correct muscular co-ordination and
with due action of the reflexes is built up, stimulated, and
sustained by hard and interesting physical exercise.
Nevertheless, in too many cases the athlete unconsciously shortens his
sporting career by the too free use of alcohol. He of all people can
least afford to overstep the bounds of strict moderation, yet the
comradeship of sport, its jolly social side brings with it great
temptations, and temptations which are daily increasing.
We can get a very clear idea of the toxic influence of the least
alcoholic excess upon the sportsman by observing the psychology of the
really confirmed inebriate.
In a chronic inebriate, loss of spontaneity is the most marked
characteristic. Such an one has to _think_ of his walking--a thing he
never had to do in his temperate days. He feels safer walking with a
stick, he develops an agoraphobia, or dread of open spaces. There is a
distinct falling off in the accuracy of the purposive movements.
No one knows more about the effects of alcohol upon the brain than Sir
Victor Horsley; _auspice_ Horsley, I have recently made some study of
this question myself. Now the athlete, the true sportsman, _depends as
much upon the condition of his brain for success as upon the condition
of his body_.
That is the finest thing about sport, and in many quarters it is the
least understood thing about it.
Now if we pursue the analogy of the confirmed inebriate we are able to
detect exactly the same symptoms, though in an infinitely less degree,
in the player of games who consciously or unconsciously drinks more
than is good for him.
At a critical moment in a game (let us say) the cerebellum or little
brain fails for a single instant to transmit its message _via_ the
nerve telegraphs of the body to the motor muscles. The catch is
missed, the pass is made half-a-second too late; the little extra dose
of alcohol has disorganized the accurate execution of muscular
action--and perhaps a match is lost, a sportsman’s career definitely
injured.
Even in small quantities--provided always these quantities are in
excess of the reasonable individual need--alcohol has a definite and
harmful effect upon the actual performance of a voluntary movement.
In an essay of this length one is compelled to take a broad
summarizing view of such a question as it deals with. There has been
no space to enter into dozens of aspects of the bad effect that drink
is having upon the sport of the day. But I have said enough to show
how great the evil is, and I am absolutely convinced that hundreds of
sportsmen will agree with me that the poison is active, the danger
imminent.
It is an article of my creed that sport in its best sense means not
only the salvation of the individual but the consolidation of the
country. All sedentary and spoony sins, effeminacy, softness, and
every sort of degeneration _cannot_ form a part of the sportsman’s
temperament. Neither you nor I have ever known a good sportsman who is
mentally “wrong.” When eggs are oysters and tea is Chablis we may meet
with such a phenomenon, and not till then.
What a preposterous and malignant thing it is, therefore, that a cloud
is forming over one of the noblest of modern forces! Every genuine
sportsman _must_ get hot and angry in the presence of such a filthy
and disturbing parasite as this is. Leagues, societies,
confraternities, are all very well in their way. To accomplish, to
carry out a _material_ purpose, they are the best possible machinery.
But I am not so sure that they are always as valuable when the point
is a moral, or rather an ethical one. Be this as it may, and it is a
difficult question to settle, I am sure, at least, that a hundred
thousand pamphlets, offices--and a glib secretary--in Victoria Street,
even a piece of coloured ribbon as a visible badge of enthusiasm, are
not nearly as powerful as a quiet and _individual_ discountenance of
what is base and dangerous. A cynical daylight always follows too
theatrical enthusiasm.
Sportsmen are not theatrical, and their influence can be exerted
without pledges of war and a little book of rules. The reprobate
purlieus of sport can be cleansed by any one who is awake to the
lurking, growing evil on the one hand, and the high mission, the
“commission” is a better word, he holds as a “sportsman” upon the
other.
But certainly something must be done. It is too much that we should
allow whisky, which is two-thirds amyl-alcohol; beer, which is full of
pectins and colouring matter; brandy, which is German potato
spirit--all the allied filths--to sap and weaken a national heritage,
and the chief preservative of manhood which remains in this neurotic
age.
I put a line from Juvenal at the head of this article. Florio
translates it--
“A wise man will use moderation,
Even in things of commendation.”
“Sapiens” should have been translated “sportsman,” for it is a synonym
in this case.
I do not know whether one should say that drink or betting is the
greatest menace to modern sport. The latter, at any rate, permeates it
in an alarming degree.
Mealy generalities are of no use, and it is a mere derision to pretend
that nearly every branch of sport is not imperilled and besmirched by
betting.
Dumb protest is always going on, but sportsmen themselves hear very
little of it. Papers devoted to sporting matters do not speak out, and
the campaign against betting made by the layman only reaches the
sportsman’s ears with a muffled sound--like a drum beaten under a
blanket.
Moreover, if the general public desires anything it always declares
solemnly that it is true, the only truth. If it does not, it bawls out
that it does not exist and has never existed. The Christian
Scientists, for instance, are beginning to say this of Death itself,
and the non-sporting majority, who want to make money without earning
it, most certainly desire the continuance of betting.
I am quite confident, therefore, that the second half of this essay
will be assailed quite as widely as the first part was, when it
appeared in a magazine. In the first part the facts are very carefully
authenticated, as they are in this one. Yet the obvious retort was
hunted out with all the enthusiasm of a short-sighted bloodhound, and
in some quarters one was spoken of as a sensation-monger, who probably
made a good thing out of his wares!
That, of course, is very easy to say, but it is not argument. It is
nevertheless welcome, because the vigour of the attack always shows
the strength of the position.
In connection with the Betting Question, the mind at once turns to
horse-racing. There is much to be said in this regard, and I intend to
treat of this branch of sport later on in my statement. But I propose
to begin with other instances of the evil. Evil it undoubtedly is. The
massive harmony which the body and mind sound in correlation under the
influences of true sport, is made discordant by it.
Like the youth of a nation, sportsmen are, in a sense, the trustees of
posterity, and we must unite not only to recognize the fact but to
crush the evil.
No sportsman ever takes a puritanical view of betting. It is the sort
of person who thinks vaccination immoral, and whose conversation is
like a glass of still lemonade, who thinks that a wager is a sin. This
is a fault. I believe that I am voicing the point of view of the
sportsman--which is simply the conviction of the sensible man--when I
say that there is absolutely no harm in an ordinary wager. You put
what you can afford to lose upon the result of a horse-race or a
football match. If you win you are rather pleased and you have hurt no
one. If you lose you are not hurt in any way, and you have done no
more than make a mistake in prescience.
It is necessary to define the difference between a bet which is
harmless, and systematic betting which is eventually an attempt to
obtain the emoluments of industry without the effort of toil, an
attempt which--and here is the very essence of the matter--leads to an
abominable dishonesty and the most scandalous abuse.
And now, by graduated steps, let us proceed to a definite presentment
of the evil as it exists on the day when you read what I am saying.
You will please observe that one begins upon the small organ and in
the minor chord. The swell and the crescendo will start later on,
until we have full pedal music and thunder of the big pipes!
It has always been the boast of Oxford and Cambridge men that the
Boat-race was in its very nature an event which was utterly removed
from the gambling evil. One had a wager on one crew or the other,
perhaps--most people did not--but the great rowing match was at least
pure of offence in this regard. No public harm was ever done. I do
not for a moment say that the Boat-race is provocative of general
gambling, or is injured by it, as so many other sports are injured.
But the fact that I am going to relate is symptomatic. It shows how
the gambling spirit is growing and radiating until, in one instance at
any rate, the Boat-race itself became the incentive to dishonesty.
Upon a dull day on the Stock Exchange, a group of the younger members
began to make wagers about this event. The race was known to be a near
thing. The next day the wagers were continued until quite a little
“market” was established. The prices fluctuated according as the
reports of the training of the crews came to hand. The whole thing was
but half serious, though in a day or two large sums of money became
involved.
One member of this _coterie_, a man who was known to be a sportsman,
and one whose word had influence, deliberately circulated a false
report as to the time in which Oxford had rowed a course, queered the
market, and made a considerable sum.
In regarding the gambling question the attention of the ordinary man
is generally focussed upon the race-course and upon the bookmaker, as
he squirms his careful way through life. People either forget or
don’t realize that most of the minor sports are being utterly spoilt
and ruined by betting.
Cycle-racing is still a sport which is keenly pursued, though perhaps
it has declined somewhat in popularity of late years. In many of the
suburban districts round London there are fine cycle tracks, built
with all the last improvements which the track-architects of America
have discovered. In the Midlands and North of England there are
magnificent tracks in nearly all the principal towns.
Cycle-racing is popular, draws enormous crowds, and draws the small
bookmaker also. It is a known fact that at any big cycle-race meetings
bets are made with all the briskness and regularity possible.
Large sums do not change hands. Half-crowns, sovereigns and
half-sovereigns represent the actual ready-money transactions, though
in sporting public-houses, for days before a big local event, much
greater amounts are wagered.
It is no use for any one to pretend that this is not so--I have
innumerable facts. One instance, which may be interesting to set down
here, was related to me by a friend who is a builder of scientific
miniature rifle ranges. At one time he resided in Manchester, and
frequently visited the great pleasure-gardens known as Belle Vue in
that city. My informant used himself to make a book on the cycle track
in this popular place of amusement.
“I used to make quite a lot of money,” he told me. “It was great fun.”
“But how did you do it?” I asked him. “Describe” ...
“Oh, it was quite easy. You waited till the one or two policemen who
were strolling about were not near; they were never too anxious to
bother one in any case. Then I used to jump up on the railing and say
‘I’ll take money!’ I used to get a lot of punters round in a minute by
shouting the odds.”
How many readers will call out, “Much ado about nothing.” “What harm,”
they will ask, “can the small wagers of a crowd at a Manchester
cycle-race possibly do to Sport?”
I reply that these wagers do the very _gravest_ harm, not perhaps to
the wagerers, but to real Sport itself. The fact of so many hundreds
of people having a financial interest in the success of this or that
rider at once puts the rider--a sportsman--in a position of danger and
temptation. The low class of person who has his being in the
side-scenes, the tortuous _coulisses_ of Sport, is always at hand to
make a disgraceful bargain with the athlete. Men who are accustomed
to regard life as no more than a game of cunning come with gold in
their soiled hands. And if the sportsman succumbs, then not only is a
bar sinister charged on his personal escutcheon, but the whole tone of
Sport is lowered. Every single instance of this kind fosters a base
and ignoble view of Sport, and it _does_ matter very much indeed that
Tom loses half-a-crown, Dick makes five shillings, and Harry comes out
“even on the afternoon.”
If fools _must_ gamble, why are they not allowed to do it apart from
such a fine and splendid thing as Sport? I would far rather see a
nasty little Casino established in every town, where fools might lose
what they can’t afford in the hope of winning what they won’t work
for, than see them tempting athletes and spoiling the game.
Of two evils choose the least--a make-shift maxim, but sound in its
way!
Very few dwellers in the South and West of England are aware of the
extraordinary interest taken in the Midlands and the North in
pigeon-flying. This is a good and fascinating pastime. It certainly
interests me, and there is something very stimulating to the
imagination in it. The careful breeding of strong-pinioned birds, the
training of them, the vast distances they cover under changing skies
and down the long invisible slants of the wind--it has an appeal, has
it not? Certainly it requires real knowledge and care.
I don’t suppose that there is any minor sport so utterly spoilt and
degraded by gambling as this sport is.
They tell a good story in the North which epitomizes the whole thing.
It is a reprobate yarn, but it is funny.... An old pitman lay a-dying.
He had been a worthy fellow, a very well-known breeder and flyer of
pigeons, and his only fault had been that he wagered what, to him,
were reckless sums upon the results of pigeon-flying matches.
He lay dying, and the Vicar of the parish sat by his bedside and tried
to ease the fear of passing from one life to another by telling the
man of what might well await him in the next world.
...“Did thee say as I should be a gradely angel, parson?” the old
fellow said.
“You’ve lived a straight life, John.”
“Angels ’as wings, don’t they?”
“The poets and painters have always imagined so, John.”
“Well, I’m goin’ first, and I’m reet sorry to say good-bye to thee,
Vicar. But I make no doubt thee’ll be up there soon theeself. Now I’ll
tell thee what I’ll do when thee arrives. _I’ll fly thee for a
quid!_”
That makes one laugh--it makes me laugh at least--but it is merely one
of those pleasant jests which divert the mind from the contemplation
of an evil. Clergymen in the Midlands and the North have told me the
saddest stories of humble homes ruined, broken and bankrupt, because
of the gambling on pigeon-races. The moral fibre of many a collier and
millhand is often destroyed by betting on this sport. Women and
children suffer in consequence, rates are raised in the local
commonwealth, and once more “sport”--that misunderstood word--is
soiled and besmirched in the public mind. And those of us who are
capable of taking a broad and comprehensive view of affairs must allow
that the sport-hating Puritan has at least got some reason for his
distorted point of view.
He can say, and with perfect justice, that betting has killed
professional sculling.
He can point out, and no one can deny it, that even the quiet, but
highly-skilled game of bowls is permeated with the gambling spirit,
that owing to the large sums put up as prizes and wagered upon
results, the temptation to players in a public contest is enormous.
“What is this sport you vaunt so loudly?” the Puritan said. “Surely it
is a thing which is essentially bad and wrong, because of the evils it
excites. When the American press accuses English oarsmen of ‘doping’
an American eight’s crew owing to heavy betting on the part of the
other crew, when American athletes refuse to dress in the same room as
a competing team of English athletes--is it not obvious that sport
cannot be the worthy and fine thing you say it is?”
I have voiced the shrill cry of prejudice and exaggeration. But truth
must always be the basis upon which exaggeration is built. No one, to
my theory, can successfully exaggerate a lie. The result is redundant,
and so, unconvincing, while the attempt itself is like trying to add
four pounds of butter to four o’clock.
In the space of an article such as this, I must not unduly prolong the
dismal story of how the _minor_ sports are being injured by gambling.
Yet the whippet-racing of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Northumberland
has degenerated, and the sport must be given a bad name--though it is
the owners and not the dogs who ought to be hung!
Pigeon-shooting--if that is indeed a sport, which I personally beg
leave to doubt--has become no trial of skill and readiness, but an
occasion upon which, when the betting is in favour of a right-hand
shot, a needle is sometimes put into the left eye of the bird so that
it may swerve to the right upon its release from the trap and increase
the difficulty of the aim.
I am informed that birds are frequently blinded in this abominable way
at local English meetings, and also in Germany--in the interests of
gambling. In this matter, however, it is only right to say that the
Hon. E. S. Butler--one of the crack pigeon-shots of the day--tells me
that the conditions at Monte Carlo are absolutely fair, though the
betting is most heavy.
There is hardly any “gambling” in English golf. Private matches
sometimes provoke a heavy wager between the players, but that is not
gambling. In Scotland, however, where most towns have links which are
open to everybody for a fee of threepence, there is an immense amount
of gambling among the poorer classes. Now it is certainly far better
that the Scotch mechanic should spend his Saturday afternoon playing
at a fine game than in watching other people play it, as his English
brother does at a football match. But it is an enormous pity that such
facilities as the poorer folk enjoy for sport should be abused and
spoilt. A well-known Scotch clergyman, a favourite preacher of the
late Queen’s, tells me that the gambling at golf makes a constant
watchfulness necessary on the part of players. “Many of them will
cheat if they can,” he said; “and you’ll know how easy it is to cheat
at golf? It’s just the money aspect of the question. It’s small wonder
that a man will move his ball an inch from under a bunker, if it’s
necessary and the other fellow isn’t looking, when perhaps a third of
his week’s wages depends upon the lie.”
Again I would punctuate my instance with the moral it affords. Here
also sport suffers. If I did not believe in the inherent nobility of
sport, if I was not absolutely convinced of its supremely important
place in the life of both soul and body, I should not be writing this.
But as one goes on with this dismal catalogue--no very pleasant task,
one gets into a fever of indignation. “_Duo quum patiuntur idem, non
est idem_,” of course. No two men experience identical effects from
identical causes. But true sportsmen will at least share something of
my feeling. And it’s no use to set out alone to kick the world’s
shins. The world has several million shins to your one. We must
_combine_--we who love sport and realize what it means.
The Hermes of Praxiteles is a perfect type of all that is _physically_
fit and fine--and so _spiritually_ also--in man.
Take that statue and regard it for a moment as a concrete
manifestation of all that is meant by the word “sport.”
And then, suppose that the Hermes of Praxiteles were your own
possession, that you had it in your own house. Would you allow a crew
of people who cared nothing for great art to cover it with mud?
......Now to gambling as it affects the major sports.
Cricket is fortunately untouched, save very occasionally in League
cricket. It is pleasant to think of our national game as unsmirched.
But football, which we may well call our other national game, is most
deeply and gravely involved.
Of the two games, rugby is cleanest in this regard. In the Northern
Union District there is more gambling than elsewhere, but, take it all
in all, rugby does not greatly suffer.
But what can one say of Association football?
......There are many quite well-known instances of goal-keepers being
bribed. They are, indeed, so well known that people who are
interested in the game, and know anything of its polity and ways need
hardly be reminded of them.
The buying and selling of players--for it is just that--and their
transference from club to club, is responsible for much of the evil,
as I see it. But in Association especially, not only does sport suffer
from the occasional dishonesty of the players, but the game itself
provides a constant incentive to the spectators to forget the beauty
of its _raison d’être_ and to regard it merely as an opportunity for
speculation.
Is running untainted? Not a bit of it!
Professional running is in an even worse condition than when Wilkie
Collins wrote his remarkable novel about it--though _professional_
running no longer holds its old position or keeps its old importance.
But the Sheffield handicaps, and the Scotch professional contests at
Edinburgh, still exist as prominent features in the sporting life of
our time. And as prominent scandals also.
Amateur running is far more widely entangled with betting than most
people are aware.
Some time ago, on the County Ground at Bristol, there were six men in
a heat for a 120 yards race. Five of these were friends and the sixth
was almost a stranger, but one whose record, by comparison, would
certainly have secured him the race in the opinion of experts.
This last gentleman was taken aside before the race and offered ten
pounds “To let Bill win.”
Please remember that I am neither inventing nor exaggerating, that I
have chapter and verse, that I have gone into the whole question most
carefully, that I relate _fact_.
From the ancient times when gladiators fought with the brutal spiked
cestus, until the present day, boxing has always been a fine sport.
Among the Romans it was certainly brutally misused, and in our own
time of the Prince Regent it was not free from the charge of
brutality. To-day, in the humane progress of ideas, the ring cannot be
assailed in this regard. We have refined this splendid sport until it
stands purged of all imputations of savagery.
Of savagery, yes; of the far meaner vice of gambling, no! Who can say
for certainty that any fight, in Bristol, Liverpool, Cumberland, at
the N.S.C., “Wonderland,” or even at the Belsize, is absolutely a
square fight? Who knows whether the blind old heathen goddess of
chance has not been harnessed by the money-mongers and is waiting with
malevolent intention at the ropes?
No one can say with _certainty_, outside the Army, Public Schools, and
the ’Varsity contests.
The rascality of the ring would fill a number of a magazine. Boxing is
no longer a national sport, which goes on everywhere and, as a matter
of course, under the full sunlight. It has sunk into a local amusement
or a located disgrace. And it has sunk simply and solely because of
gambling.
Wrestling, that worthy and ancient English sport, has almost ceased to
exist. I have had a cottage in Cornwall for some years and it is my
privilege to know many of the champions of the past in this chief old
home of the game.
I know what it was once, how splendid and stimulating to the life of
the community. And what is wrestling to-day? It is a sporadic contest,
between great players indeed, but one which is utterly spoilt and
discredited, when looked upon from the true sportsman’s point of view.
In the most cynical and open way many of the sporting newspapers
discuss the probability of this or that bout being a “square” one or
not. With the indifference with which one would discuss the chances of
an egg proving to be fresh or stale, some journalists determine the
pros and cons of honour and dishonour.
I have a friend who is a theatrical agent and _entrepreneur_. Among
his various activities, he is the manager for the champion wrestler of
the world. “You never know,” he said to me at dinner, “you never
really know the truth about the _bona fides_ of many wrestling bouts
until the contest is over. Of course men like ‘----’ and ‘----’ are
absolutely square. They are the _haute noblesse_ of the game. They’ve
got to be. But you may take it from me that dozens and dozens of
contests are faked in the interests of the betting ring.”
After extreme youth is over, life mercifully dulls the hunger for
perfection in all of us. There never was a time in the history of
horse-racing when people did not bet. Nor does one expect the
impossible. But while racing was never more popular and more strongly
organized than it is to-day, it was never so provocative of evil, so
_manqué_ from the true sportsman’s point of view. The men of carrion
passions, and the army of muddy knaves who live by the exploitation
and bespatterment of the noblest of sports, are legion.
The smaller fry who make existence possible for the knaves--the
ordinary men who bet regularly on races--are millions. There is no
need to insist upon the fact, it is as dismal and obvious as a lump of
clay. The whole atmosphere of the turf is like the degradation of the
air in a close bedroom with the windows shut.
It is not my province or intention here to go very deeply into
illustrative detail in the matter of the turf. It is better to be
luminous than voluminous. But there are one or two points which may be
new and instructive for the non-gambling sportsman.
Here is a recent quotation from a well-known English “sporting”
paper--one of those, by the way, which conveys “humour” direct from
the pit to the front page.