The day of the Gladiator is not past. Near New York this month the
pugilistic champion of the United States, for the consideration of
merely a million dollars, will stand up for something less than an hour
to pummel and be pummeled by the pugilistic champion of Europe.
Nearly seventy thousand fervid partisans will look on, eating
peanuts--primordially yelling for blood.
Among them, it is said, will be hundreds who figure prominently in
Bradstreet's, the Blue Book and the Society Column.
Gentlewomen will be there--in the fifty dollar seat section. Roustabouts
and longshoremen, barristers, doctors and preachers, business men and
government officials--and small boys roosting in neighboring trees--all
with "thumbs down" when one bruiser weakens.
Who is there to stop wars and rumors of wars while the spirit of the
gladiatorial combat is thus rampant in human society, breaking through
the carefully laid veneer of civilization?