THE PEOPLES AT PLAY
American Sport Twenty-five Years Ago--The Power of Golf--A
Look Ahead--Britain, Mother of Sports--Buffalo in New York--And
Pheasants on Clapham Common--Shooting Foxes and the "Sport" of
Wild-fowling--The Amateur in American Sport--At Henley--And at
Large--Teutonic Poppycock.
In "An Error in the Fourth Dimension," Kipling tells how one Wilton
Sargent, an American, came to live in England and earnestly laboured to
make himself more English than the English. He learned diligently to do
many things most un-American:--"Last mystery of all he learned to
golf--well; and when an American knows the innermost meaning of '_Don't
press, slow back and keep your eye on the ball_,' he is, for practical
purposes, de-nationalised." Some six years after that was written an
American golfer became Amateur Champion of Great Britain. Yes; I know
that Mr. Travis was not born in the United States, but _qua_ golfer he
is American pure and simple. Which shows the danger of too hasty
generalisation, even on the part of a genius. And it shows more. When he
wrote those words Kipling was fully justified by the facts as they
stood. It is the fault of the character of the American people, which
frustrates prophecy.
Twenty-five years ago there was no amateur sport in America--none. Men,
it is true, went off and shot ("hunted" as Americans call it) and fished
and yachted for a few days, or weeks, in summer or autumn, in a rather
rough-and-ready sort of way. Also, when at college they played baseball
and football and, perhaps, they rowed. After leaving college there was
probably not one young American in a hundred who entered a boat or
played a game of either football or baseball on an average of once in a
year. The people as a whole had no open-air games. Baseball was chiefly
professional. Cricket had a certain foothold in Philadelphia and on
Staten Island, but it was an exotic sport, as it remains to-day, failing
entirely to enlist the sympathies of the multitude. Polo was not played.
Lawn tennis had been introduced, but had made little headway. In all
America there were, I think, three racquet courts, which were used
chiefly by visiting Englishmen, and not one tennis court. Lacrosse was
quite unknown, and as for the "winter sports" of snow-shoeing, ski-ing,
ice-boating, curling, and tobogganing, they were practised only here and
there by a few (except for the "coasting" of children) as rather a
curious fad.
It was a strange experience for an Englishman in those days, fond of his
games, to go from his clubs and the society of his fellows at home, to
mix in the same class of society in America. As in the circles that he
had left behind him, so there, the conversation was still largely on
sporting topics, but while in England men talked of the games in which
they played themselves and of the feats and experiences of their
friends, in the leading young men's clubs of New York--the Union, the
Knickerbocker, and the Calumet--the talk was solely of professional
sport: of the paid baseball nines, of prize fighters (Sullivan was then
just rising to his glory), and professional scullers (those were the
days of Hanlan), and the like. No man talked of his own doings or of
those of his friends, for he and his friends did nothing, except perhaps
to spar for an hour or so once or twice a week, or go through
perfunctory gymnastics for their figures' sakes.
Until a dozen years ago the situation had not materially changed. Lawn
tennis had made some headway, but the thing that wrought the revolution
was the coming of golf. It may be doubted if ever in history has any
single sport, pastime, or pursuit so modified the habits, and even the
character, of a people in an equal space of time as golf has modified
those of the people of the United States.
Enough has already been written of the enthusiasm with which the
Americans took up the game itself, of the social prestige which it at
once obtained, of the colossal sums of money that have been lavished on
the making of courses, of the sumptuousness of the club-houses that have
sprung up all over the land. That golf is in itself a fascinating game,
is sufficiently proved in England, where it has drawn so many thousands
of devotees away from cricket, football, lawn tennis, and other sports.
But can we imagine what the result might have been if there had been in
Great Britain no cricket, or football, or other sports, so that all the
game-loving enthusiasm of the nation had been free to turn itself loose
into that one channel? And this is just what did happen in America. Golf
had a clear field and a strenuous sport-loving nation, devoid of
open-air games, at its mercy.
The result was not merely that people took to playing golf and that
young men neglected their offices and millionaires stretched unwonted
muscles in scrambling over bunkers. Golf taught the American people to
play games. It took them out from their great office-buildings and from
their five-o'clock cocktails at the club, into the open air; and they
found that the open air was good. So around nearly every golf club other
sports grew up. Polo grounds were laid out by the side of the links,
croquet lawns appeared on one side of the club-house and lawn-tennis
nets arose on the other, while traps for the clay-pigeon shooters were
placed safely off in a corner.
Golf came precisely at the moment when the people were ready for it.
Just as America, having in a measure completed the exploitation of her
own continent and developed a manufacturing power beyond the resources
of consumption in her people, was commercially ripe for the invasion of
the markets of the world; just as she came, in her overflowing wealth
and power, to a recognition of her greatness as a nation, and was
politically ripe for an Imperial policy of colonial expansion; just as,
tired of the loose code of ethics of the scrambling days, when the
country was still one half wilderness and none had time to care for the
public conscience, she was morally ripe for the wonderful revival which
has set in in the ethics of politics and commerce and of which Mr.
Roosevelt has been and is the chief apostle: so, by the individual
richness of her citizens, giving larger leisure in which to cultivate
other pleasures than those which their offices or homes could afford,
she was ripe for the coming of the day of open-air games. And having
turned to them, she threw herself into their pursuit with the ardour
and singleness of purpose which are characteristic of the people and
which, as applied to games, seem to English eyes to savour almost of
professionalism. As a matter of fact they are only the manifestations of
an essential trait of the American character.
The result was that almost at the same time as an American player was
winning the British Amateur Golf Championship, an American polo team was
putting All England on her mettle at Hurlingham, and it was not with any
wider margin than was necessary for comfort that Great Britain retained
the honours in lawn tennis, which she has since lost to one of her own
colonies.
It is curious that this awakening of the amateur sporting spirit in the
United States should have come just at the time when many excellent
judges were bewailing the growing popularity of professional sport in
England. Any day now, one may hear complaints that the British youth is
giving up playing games himself for the purpose of watching professional
wrestlers or football games or county cricket matches. My personal
opinion is that there is no need to worry. The growing interest in
exhibition games reacts in producing a larger number of youths who
strive to become players. Not only in spite of, but largely because of,
the greater spectacular attraction of both football and cricket than in
years gone by, there is an immensely larger number of players of
both--and of all other--games than there ever was before. It is little
more than a score of years since Association football, at least, was
practically the monopoly of a few public schools and of the members of
the two Universities--of "gentlemen" in fact. Any loss which the nation
can have suffered from the tendency to sit on benches and applaud
professional players must have been made up a thousand times over in the
benefit to the national physique from the spreading of the game into
wide classes which formerly regarded it, much as they might fox-hunting,
as a pastime reserved only for their "betters."
It is none the less interesting and instructive that in this field as in
so many others the directly opposite tendencies should be at work in the
two countries: that just when America is beginning to learn the delight
of being a game-loving nation and amateur sport is thriving, not yet to
the detriment of, but in proportions at least which stand fair
comparison with, professional, the cry should be raised in England that
Englishmen are forgetting to play games themselves in their eagerness to
watch others do them better. Here, as in other things, the gap between
the habits of the two peoples is narrowing rapidly. They have not yet
met; for in England the time and attention given to games and sports by
amateurs is still incomparably greater than on the other side. But that
the advancing lines will meet--and even cross--seems probable. And when
they have crossed, what then? Will America ever oust Great Britain from
the position which she holds as the Mother of Sports and the athletic
centre of the world?
Some things, it appears, one can predict with certainty. America has
already taken to herself a disagreeable number of the records in track
athletics; and she will take more. On the links the performance of Mr.
Travis, isolated as yet, is only a warning of many similar experiences
in the future. In a few years it will be very hard for any visiting golf
team of less than All England or All Scotland strength to win many
matches against American clubs on their home courses; and the United
States will be able to send a team over here that will be beaten only by
All England--or perhaps will not be beaten by All Britain. At polo the
Americans will go on hammering away till they produce a team that can
stand unconquered at Hurlingham. It will be very long before they can
turn out a dozen teams to match the best English dozen; but by mere
force of concentration and by the practice of that quality which, as has
already been said, looks so like professionalism to English eyes, one
team to rival the English best they will send over. In lawn tennis it
cannot be long before a pair of Americans will do what an Australian
pair did in 1907, just as the United States already holds the Ladies'
Championship; and England is going to have some difficulty in recovering
her honours at court tennis. In rifle shooting America must be expected
to beat England oftener than England beats America; but the edge will be
taken off any humiliation that there might be by the fact that Britain
will have Colonial teams as good as either.
And when all this has happened, will England's position be shaken? Not
one whit! Not though the _America's_ cup never crosses the Atlantic and
though sooner or later an American college crew succeeds--as surely, for
their pluck, they deserve to succeed--in imitating the Belgians and
carrying off the Grand at Henley. There remain games and sports enough
which the United States will never take up seriously, at which if she
did she would be debarred by climatic conditions or other causes from
ever threatening British supremacy.
The glory of England lies in the fact that she "takes on" the best of
all the nations of the world at their own games. It is not the United
States only, but all her Colonies and every country of Europe that turn
to Great Britain as to their best antagonist in whatever sport they find
themselves proficient. Just now England's brow is somewhat bare of
laurels, but year in and year out Britain will continue to win the
majority of contests in her meetings with all the world; and if she lose
at times, is it not better to have rivals good enough to make her extend
herself? And is it not sufficient for her pride that she, one people,
should win--if it be only--half of all the world's honours?
Meanwhile Englishmen can afford to rejoice ungrudgingly at the new
spirit which has been born in the United States. Each year the number of
"events" in which an international contest is possible increases. The
time may not be far away when there will be almost as long a list of
Anglo-American annual contests as there is now between Oxford and
Cambridge. But it will be a very long time before the United States can
displace Great Britain from the pre-eminence which she holds--and the
wonderful character of which, I think, few Englishmen appreciate. Before
that time comes such other sweeping changes will probably have come over
the map of the world and the relations of the peoples that Britain's
displacement will have lost all significance.
And Englishmen can always remember that, whatever triumphs the
Americans may win in the domain of sport, they win them by virtue of the
English blood that is in them.
* * * * *
It is, of course, inevitable that in many particulars the American and
English ideas of sport should be widely different. There is an old, old
story in America of the Englishman who arrived in New York and, on the
day after his arrival, got out his rifle and proceeded to make enquiries
of the hotel people as to the best direction in which to start out to
find buffalo--the nearest buffalo at the time being, perhaps, two
thousand miles away. It is a story which has contributed not a little to
contempt of the Britisher in many an innocent American mind. It happens
that in my own experience I have known precisely that same blunder made
by an American in England.
I had met an American friend, with whom I have shot in America, at his
hotel on the evening of his arrival in London one day in November. In
the course of conversation I mentioned that the shooting season was in
full swing.
"Good," he said. "Let me hire a gun somewhere to-morrow and let's go
out, if you've nothing to do, and have some shooting."
Nothing, he opined, would be simpler, or more agreeable, than to drive
out--or possibly take a train--to some wild spot in the vicinity of
London--Clapham Common perhaps--and spend a day among the pheasants. It
was precisely the Englishman and his buffalo--the prehistoric instinct
of the race ("What a beautiful day! Let us go and kill something!")
blossoming amid unfamiliar conditions. My American friend wanted to
kill an English pheasant. He had heard much of them as the best of
game-birds. He had eaten them, much refrigerated, in New York and found
them good. And he knew nothing of preserving and of a land that is all
parcelled out into parks and gardens and spinneys. Why not then go out
and enjoy ourselves? Before he left England he had some pheasant
shooting, and it is rarely that a man on his first day at those
conspicuous but evasive fowl renders as good an account of himself as
did he. Similarly every American with a sound sporting instinct must
hope that that traditional Englishman ultimately got his buffalo.
Many times in the United States in the old days have I done exactly what
that American then wished to do in London. Finding myself compelled to
spend a night at some crude and unfamiliar Western town, I have made
enquiries at the hotel as to the shooting--duck or prairie chicken--in
the neighbourhood. Hiring a gun of the local gunsmith and buying a
hundred cartridges, one then secured a trap with a driver, who probably
brought his own gun and shot also (probably better than oneself), but
who certainly knew the ground. The best ground might be three or five or
ten miles out--open prairie where chicken were plentiful, or a string of
prairie lakes or "sloughs" (pronounced "sloo") with duck-passes between.
That evening one came home, hungry and happy as a hunter ought to be,
with perhaps half a dozen brace of spike-tailed grouse (the common
"chicken" of the Northwestern States) or ten or a dozen duck--mallard,
widgeon, pintail, two kinds of teal, with, it might be, a couple of
red-heads or canvas-backs,--or, not improbably, a magnificent Canada
goose as the spoils.
With the settlement of the country, the multiplication of shooters, and
the increase in the number of "gun-clubs," which have now included most
of the easily accessible duck-grounds in the country in their private
preserves, the possibilities of those delightful days are growing fewer,
but even now there are many parts of the West where the stranger can
still do as I have done many times.
Though the people had so few outdoor games, the great majority of
Americans, except the less well-to-do of the city-dwellers of the
Eastern States, have been accustomed to handle gun and rod from their
childhood. The gun may at first have been a rusty old muzzle-loader, and
the rod a "pole" cut from the bank of the stream with a live grasshopper
for bait; and there are few better weapons to teach a boy to be a keen
sportsman. The birds that he shot were game--duck or geese, turkeys,
quail, grouse, or snipe--and the fish that he caught were mostly game
fish--trout and bass. It is true that the American generally shoots
foxes; so does the Englishman when he goes to the Colonies where there
are no hounds and too many foxes, with game birds which he wishes kept
for his own shooting, and domestic chickens which he destines for his
own table. On the other hand the American does not mount a miniature
cannon in a punt and shoot waterfowl by wholesale when sitting on the
water. It is only the gunner for the market, the man who makes his
living by it, who does that, and the laws do their best to stop even
him. The American sportsman who cannot get his duck fairly on the wing
with a 12- or 16-bore prefers not to get them at all. "But," objects
the English wildfowl shooter, "suppose the birds are not get-at-able in
any other way?" "So much," the American would retort, "the better for
the birds. They have earned their lives; get them like a sportsman or
let them go."
The time may not be far away--and many Englishmen will be glad when it
comes--when to kill waterfowl at rest with a duck gun will no longer be
considered a "sport" that a gentleman can engage in in England. Perhaps
fox-hunting will become so popular in the United States that foxes will
be generally preserved. The sportsmen of each country will then think
better of those of the other. Meanwhile it would be pleasanter if each
would believe that such little seemingly unsportsmanlike peculiarities
that the other may have developed are only the accidents of his
environment, and that under the same circumstances there is not a pin to
choose between their sportsmanship.
* * * * *
Reference has more than once been made to the quality which looks to
English eyes so much like semi-professionalism in American sport. It is
a delicate subject, in handling which susceptibilities on one side or
the other may easily be hurt.
The intense earnestness and concentration of the American on his one
sport--for most Americans are specialists in one only--does not commend
itself to English amateurs. The exclusiveness, which seems to be
suspicious of foul play, and the stringent training system of certain
American crews at Henley have been out of harmony with all the
traditions of the great Regatta and have caused much ill feeling, some
of which has occasionally come to the surface. Some of the proceedings
of American polo teams have not coincided with what is ordinarily
considered, in England, the behaviour of gentlemen in matters of amateur
sport. On the other hand, Americans universally believe that Lord
Dunraven acted in a most unsportsmanlike manner in the unfortunate cup
scandal; and in one case they are--or were at the time--convinced that
one of their crews was unfairly treated at Henley. Honours therefore on
the surface are fairly easy; and, while every Englishman knows that both
the American charges quoted are absurd, every American is no less of the
opinion that the English grounds of complaint are altogether
unreasonable.
We must remember that after all a good many of the best English golfers
and lawn-tennis players do nothing else in life but golf or play
lawn-tennis. And this tendency to specialise is undoubtedly increasing.
Meanwhile it will never be rooted out of the American character and in
departments of sport where it, and it alone, will bring pre-eminence,
Englishmen will either have to do as Americans do or, sooner or later,
consent to be defeated. There is nothing in the practice at which the
Englishman can fairly cavil. Americans have still much the fewer sports;
and it is the national habit to take up one and concentrate on it with
all one's might.[420:1]
A more difficult aspect of the situation has to do with the question of
the definition of "gentleman-amateur"; the fact being, of course, that
the same definition has not the same significance in the two countries.
The radical difficulty lies in the fact that the word "gentleman" in its
English sense of a man of gentle birth has no application to America.
Let this not be understood as a statement that there are any fewer
gentlemen in America or that the word is not used. But its usage is not
re-inforced, its limits are not defined, as in England, by any line of
cleavage in the social system. A large number of the gentlemen of
America are farmers' sons; more than half are the sons of men who
commenced life in very humble positions, and nearly all are the sons of
men who are engaged in trade or in business, the majority of them being
destined to go into trade or business (and to begin at the beginning)
themselves. In England, of course, the process of the obliteration of
the old line is going on with great rapidity. In America, on the other
hand, there is a tendency towards the drawing of a somewhat
corresponding line. But the fact remains that at present there exists
this fundamental distinction and the consequence is that Englishmen
continue to find among American "amateurs" and in teams of American
"gentlemen," individuals who would not be accepted into the same
categories in England.
But what Englishmen should endeavour to understand is that the man who
on the surface seems to belong to a class which in England would be
objectionable in the company of gentlemen probably has none of those
characteristics which would make him objectionable were he English. He
has far more of the characteristics of a gentleman than of the other
qualities. The qualities which go to make a "gentleman," even in the
English sense, are many and complex; but the assumption is that they are
all present in the man who bears the public school and university stamp.
The Englishman is accustomed to accept the presence or absence of one or
a few of those qualities in an individual as evidence of the presence or
absence of them all. In judging other Englishmen, the rule works
satisfactorily. But in America, with its different social system, the
qualities are not tied up in the same bundles, so that the same
inference fails. The same, or a similar, peculiarity of voice or speech
or manner or dress or birth does not denote--much less does it
connote--the same or similar things in representatives of the two
peoples. Particular Englishmen have learned this often enough in
individual cases. How often has it not happened that an Englishman,
meeting an American first as a stranger, not even being informed that he
is an American, has, judging from some one external characteristic,
turned from him as being an Undesirable, only to be introduced to him
later, or meet him under other conditions, and find in him one of the
best fellows that he ever met? The thing is happening every day. Very
often, with a little more knowledge or a little clearer understanding,
Englishmen would know that their judgment of some American amateur
athlete is shockingly unjust. To bar him out would be incomparably more
unjust to him than his inclusion is unjust to any antagonist.
This of course does not touch the fact--which is a fact--that in America
what answers to the gentleman-amateur in England is drawn from a much
larger proportion of the people. This does not however mean, when
rightly viewed, what Englishmen generally think it means, that Americans
go down into other--and presumably not legitimate--classes for their
recruits. It only means that a very much larger proportion of the people
belong to one class. There is no point at which an arbitrary line can be
drawn. This is in truth only another way of saying what has been said
already more than once, that the American people is really more
homogeneous than the English, or rather is homogeneous over a larger
part of its area, so that the type-American represents a greater
proportion of the people of the United States than the type-Briton
represents of the people of the British Isles.
This is obviously in the realm of sport so much to America's advantage.
It is not a condition against which the Englishman has any right to
protest, any more than he has to move amendments to the Constitution of
the United States. When better comprehended, Englishmen will accept it
without either resentment or regret. The United States has a larger
population than Great Britain: so much the better for the United
States. Also a larger proportion of that population must be admitted
into the category of gentleman-amateur in sport; so much the more the
better for them.
But, curiously enough, this condition has its inherent drawback, which
not impossibly more than compensates for its advantages. The fact that
young Americans grow up so much of a class involves the essential fact
that the enormous majority of them are educated at the Public Schools,
that is at the Board Schools or Government Schools or whatever they
would be called if their precise counterpart existed in England. The
United States has not (the fact has been touched on before) any group of
institutions comparable to the great schools of England. A few excellent
schools there are which bear some resemblance to the English models, but
they are not numerous enough to go any way towards leavening the nation.
It is to the Public Schools that, in the mass, the English
gentleman-amateur owes his training, not only in sports but in many
other things besides: especially in those things which stamp on him the
mark by which he is recognised as belonging to his right class through
life. The American, as has been said, is not so stamped; but in missing
that stamp--or in failing to receive it--he necessarily missed also all
that discipline and training in games which the Public School gave to
the Englishman. The very same cause as gives America an advantage in the
numbers from which she can draw her amateur athletes, also forbids that
these recruits should have had the same advantages of early training as
fall to the Englishman.
The thing is about as broad as it is long. It is not difficult to
imagine that the great schools might never have come into existence in
England, so that a larger proportion of the population than is now the
case would be educated at some intermediate institutions, at the Grammar
Schools let us say, when the English gentleman-amateur athletes--the
polo, golf, and tennis teams and the crews that row at Henley--would be
drawn from a larger circle of the population, and the individuals would
not bear as close a superficial resemblance, one to the other, as they
do to-day. They would in fact be more like the members of American
athletic teams as Englishmen know them. The question is whether England
would gain or lose in athletic efficiency. When Englishmen find
something to cavil at in an individual American amateur or in an
American amateur team or crew, would it not be better to stop and
consider whether the disadvantages which compel America to be
represented by such an individual or team or crew, do not outweigh the
advantages which enable her to use him or them? If the United States
were to develop the same educational machinery as exists in England,
which would stamp practically all their gentlemen-amateurs with the same
hall-mark, as they are so stamped in England, and would at the same time
give them the English public-school boy's training in games, would not
England, as a mere matter of athletic rivalry, be worse off instead of
better?
* * * * *
For the purpose of pointing the moral of the essential likeness of the
American and English characters, as contrasted with those of other
peoples, reference has already been made to Professor Muensterberg and
his book. It is an excellent book; but what English writer would think
it necessary to inform English readers that "the American student
recreates himself on the athletic field rather than in the ale-house"?
We know something of the life of a German student; but it is only when a
German himself says a thing like that that he illuminates in a flash the
abyss which yawns between the moral qualities of the youth of his
country and the young American or young Englishman.
Again the same author speaks on the subject of the Anglo-Saxon love of
fair play (the sporting instinct, I have called it) as follows:
"The demand for 'fair play' dominates the whole American people, and
shapes public opinion in all matters whether large or small. And with
this finally goes the belief in the self-respect and integrity of one's
neighbour. The American cannot understand how Europeans" (Continental
Europeans, if you please, Mr. Muensterberg!) "so often reinforce their
statements with explicit mention of their honour which is at stake, as
if the hearer was likely to feel a doubt of it; and even American
children are often apt to wonder at young people abroad who quarrel at
play and at once suspect one another of some unfairness. The American
system does not wait for years of discretion to come before exerting its
influence; it makes itself felt in the nursery, where already the word
of one child is never doubted by his playmates."
There is an excellent American slang word, which is "poppycock." The
Century Dictionary speaks disrespectfully of it as a "United States
vulgarism," but personally I consider it a first-class word. The Century
Dictionary defines it as meaning, "Trivial talk; nonsense; stuff and
rubbish," which is about as near as a dictionary can get to the elusive
meaning of any slang word. English readers will understand the exact
shade of meaning of the word when I say that the paragraph above quoted
is most excellent and precise poppycock. Every American who read that
paragraph when the book was published must have chuckled inwardly, just
as every Englishman would chuckle. But the point which I wish to
emphasise is that it is not at all poppycock from the author's point of
view. I doubt not that his countrymen have been most edified by that
excellent dictum, and the trouble is that one could never make a typical
German understand wherein it is wrong. No, Mr. Muensterberg, it is not
that the sentence is untrue--far be it from me to suggest such a thing.
It is merely absurd; and you, sir, will never, never, never comprehend
why it is so.
It is in the presence of such a remark, seriously made by so excellently
capable a foreigner, that the Englishman and American ought to be able
to shake hands and realise how much of a kin they are and how far
removed from some other peoples.
* * * * *
I have dwelt on this subject of the games of the two peoples at what may
seem to many an unnecessary length, because I do not think its
importance can well be exaggerated. It is not only desirable, but it is
necessary, for a thorough mutual liking between them that there should
be no friction in matters of sport. No incident has, I believe, occurred
of late years which did so much harm to the relations between the
peoples as did the Dunraven episode in connection with the _America's_
cup races. I should be inclined to say that it did more harm (I am not
blaming Lord Dunraven) than the Venezuelan incident.
On the other hand, it is doubtful whether the more recent attempts to
recover the cup, and the spirit in which they have been conducted, have
not contributed as much as, say, the attitude of England in the Spanish
War to the increased liking for Great Britain which has made itself
manifest in the United States of recent years. Few Englishmen, probably,
understand how much is made of such matters in the American press. The
love of sport is in the blood of both peoples and neither can altogether
like the other until it believes it to have the same generous sporting
instincts and the same clean methods as itself. As a matter of fact,
they do--as in so many other traits--stand out conspicuously alike from
among all other peoples, but neither will give the other full credit for
this, till each learns to see below such slight surface appearances as
at present provoke occasional ill-will in one party or the other. Fuller
understanding will come with time and with it entire cordiality.
FOOTNOTES:
[420:1] Though immaterial to the argument, it may be as well to state
that my personal sympathies are entirely with the English practice. In
the matter of college athletics especially the spirit in which certain
sports (especially football and, in not much less degree, rowing and
baseball) are followed at some of the American universities, is entirely
distasteful to me. On the other hand, I know nothing more creditable to
the English temperament than the spirit in which the contests in the
corresponding sports are conducted between the great English
universities. And this feeling is shared, I know, by some (and I believe
by most) of those Americans who, as Rhodes scholars or otherwise, have
had an opportunity of coming to understand at first hand the difference
between the practice in the two countries. But this is an individual
prepossession only; against which stands the fact that my experience of
Americans who have won notoriety in athletics at one or other of the
American universities, is that they are unspoiled by the system through
which they have passed and possess just as sensitive and generous a
sporting instinct as the best men turned out by Oxford or Cambridge.