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Travel by train or motor anywhere in England and you see games being played particularly if it be a Saturday-from one end of the country to the other. The open spaces of England seem to be given over to men and some women batting, kicking, or hitting a ball. The attendance at games on a Saturday is very large. Even in these days of distress in the ship-building and cotton industries, when the problem of the unemployed is a serious one, there is no lack of sixpences and shillings to gain entry to the foot-ball games. Even at the beginning of the foot-ball season the gate receipts show an attendance of more than 200,000 people. When the big and final games take place I have calculated that out of the male adult population of England and Wales on a great foot-ball Saturday one in every twenty-seven is in attendance at a game of some sort, and this leans to the error of being too few, rather than too

many.

The domestic exports of the United Kingdom in 1905 were slightly over thirtyeight dollars per head, while the expenditure and investment for sport is about ten dollars per head, or a little more than onefourth as much. Excluding troops and expenditure on troops serving outside the United Kingdom, England only spent the paltry sum of $75,000,000 on her army in 1907, and the cost of her naval armament in the same year was only $167,500,000, both together considerably less than was spent for sport. The capital value of The capital value of the sporting rents advertised by a single firm of land agents one season not long ago, reckoning the letting value at four per cent., amounted to $43,750,000. The licenses to kill game bring in a revenue

We are not convinced that the writer of this description is right. The bookish man is probably disheartened by the size of the sport budget of his country, and by the enormous amount of time and energy thus expended. On the other hand, when we examine the results, and gather together the threads of what Englishmen have accomplished all over the world, nobody but a blind man can conceal from himself, that certain virile qualities of character have, thus far in the world's progress, dominated the more intellectual and philosophical traits.

Not only are muscles and sinews strengthened and hardened, but the temper and the will are trained as well. The man who learns to spar, for example, not only schools his eye and his hands and his feet to respond quickly when called upon, but he learns also, and what is far more important, to keep his temper under control, and to take a pounding cheerfully; and if a man can translate these lessons to serve in the larger affairs of life, where temper is often tempted, and where poundings are meted out to all of us with even impartiality, he has learned a valuable lesson. As Stevenson puts it: "our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits."

Every sport has the valuable effect of diverting both mind and body. A sharp gallop, a round of golf, a week's yachting, a day's shooting or fishing, changes the current of one's thoughts, and rests the mind as well as the body. All the benefits to be had from sport group themselves under these two heads, of training and diversion. diversion. The lad at his rowing, his foot-ball, his cricket, or his tennis, needs the training more than the diversion; while his father, riding, shooting, golfing, or yachting, needs the diversion more than the training.

The first settlers in America, indeed all the inhabitants thereof, until very recently, needed no sports for their training or their diversion. Building roads, and bridges, and houses, and railroads, and canals, and defending the same from their savage neighbors were enough. Civilization in those rough years was hard training enough, and every citizen was obliged to play the game whether he liked it or not. But increased prosperity, and above all, steam and electricity, not only in America but in Europe, have done away with the necessity for constant physical exercise, or for daily deeds of daring. The best of mankind, however, know intuitively that luxury is the most insidious of all foes. If we are no longer obliged to ride, or to walk, in order to see our friends or to attend to our business, then we turn to and make a business of riding, walking, shooting, fishing, climbing mountains and hunting wild game, in order to keep alive in us the hardier virtues, which, in the beginning, made our forefathers capable of winning a place for us in the world. As the necessity for self-defence and great exertion to provide food lessen, field sports become more popular.

It is often said as an objection to this argument, that a man can learn self-control and show high courage just as well by doing his duty, whatever and wherever it happens to be. It is not necessary that we should have wars, or rough games, like foot-ball or polo to steady the nerves of men, to give them courage, and to teach them to take care of themselves. The controversies and temptations and hard tasks of daily life are enough. This is true in a way. Taking care of a peevish child who is ill, is a tremendous test of patience and gentleness. Bearing the frowns of fortune with cheerfulness and in silence, shows courage. Keeping oneself well in hand through the various worries of daily life, in business, profession, or in the home, is a constant schooling of the nerves. Riding a horse over a five-barred gate, or across a water-jump, is a test of horsemanship, but before these can be successfully negotiated it is necessary to have some training at simpler feats of riding. It is the same with these other matters. He who has learned self-control, fair-play, and good temper at his games, finds it easier to exercise

these same high qualities in the more complicated emergencies of daily life. There is a German proverb which runs: "when the devil cannot go himself he sends an old woman." There is just enough truth in the old woman argument against rough games and sports, to lead one to believe that the devil sends it. The nation which presides over the destinies of one-fifth of the inhabitants of the globe, spends over two hundred millions annually for sport, and has invested something more than that besides.

Perhaps there is no severer test of a man's all-round abilities than his power to govern wisely; at any rate the governing races of to-day are races of sportsmen. The peoples who are inheriting the earth to-day are the peoples who play games, perhaps because their contests make them meek! France with her violent attempts in the last hundred years to reduce all life to a philosophical system, has a decreasing birth-rate, and has become of second-rate importance as a world power. In fact, every fresh compilation of statistics helps to show that this declining birth-rate is not a passing phase. The latest figures available for Paris, those for 1907, show that an actual shrinkage of the population is a fact. In spite of the fact that the marriage rate has been on an ascending scale for the last twenty-five years, and that the death-rate has had, on the whole, a tendency to lower, the population does not increase. Last year there were 50,811 births against 50,499 deaths, a margin of only 312 to the good. But even this is not accurate, since some 30 per cent. of babies born in Paris are sent away to the country to be nursed. Their births appear in the Paris registers, but if they die in infancy, their deaths are recorded in the provincial commune where the death takes place. Thus Paris escapes having to record nearly one-third of the infant mortality which might reasonably be expected in the City's death roll. Whether it be the lack of the sporting instinct or not, there is no gainsaying this proof of lack of breeding power. And when it is added that only recently France was obliged to dismiss her Secretary of Foreign Affairs at the demand of the German Emperor, her situation as a world power becomes pathetically inferior.

The traveller in Spain has seen that the

salient characteristics of the race are overweening personal pride, untrustworthiness and cruelty. The sordid stealing on all sides by Russians during the war with Japan needs no repetition here. The Chinese despise unnecessary physical exercise, and can scarcely be driven to fight, and they are no more capable of defending their country than an enormous cheese to prevent itself being eaten. On the other hand, Japan is a nation of athletes whose prowess has only lately been discovered, and they are the more dangerous accordingly. Indeed, it is an open question whether England's hypocritical and short-sightedly selfish alliance with these varnished savages has not done more to menace Saxon civilization, both in Europe and in America, than any diplomatic step that has been taken for centuries.

We have seen something of the origins of the English race in another chapter, and we have seen, too, something of their almost universal desire to be let alone, and to be governed only up to that point where individual freedom is least interfered with. Their love of the land, and their outdoor life, have prevailed through all the centuries since they became possessed of what is now Great Britain.

There is a rational philosophy back of this interest in sport. Only a race of strong men, fighting men, can keep themselves free from enemies abroad and enemies at home, as they have done, and conquer the world to boot. Sport is merely artificial work, artificial adventure, artificial colonizing, artificial war. It is shooting at a mark because there are no enemies to shoot at; it is keeping the muscles hard and the nerves steady, and the head, heart and body under control, by a subterfuge, now that the real necessity has passed. And though there are, perhaps, higher and better tests of patience and self control and courage than are required at foot-ball, hunting, or golf, there is certainly no better preparation to bear those tests, than the schooling one gets by playing these games.

There is, of course, another side to this question, that no one can afford to overlook. There is a marked difference between a game played for training or diversion, and a game played as a business and for a salary. That is no longer sport but

business, and there is nothing more degrading than to give all one's time and energy to the lighter, or to the physical side of life. That is not training nor diversion, but merely a debauchery of brutality. Society is good, sport is good, novel reading is good

as a diversion or a rest from more serious matters, but any one of them taken up as a business, as a vocation, makes but a sad return to its devotee. Sport as a profession, I quite agree, breeds more bullies, boasters and tricksters, than anything else I can name.

Sport, too, even in the hands of amateurs may produce these same vulgar qualities. England has suffered severely along these lines, because here sport has so many more participants. The gentleman sharpers, welshers, and blacklegs, at racing, pigeon shooting, and cards, are too largely recruited from the English. Only within the last few years a turf scandal involving two gentlemen of high rank and another of no rank, either socially or morally, disclosed a degree of infamous chicanery unworthy of a Chinese gambling hell. Race horses have been poisoned, pigeon shots have sold themselves to the book-makers and so on. This indeed is the grave danger to sport among a people whose tastes are predominantly physical. An hundred years ago you might have seen in a certain English village, the village idiot taken out on fair days, and chained to a stake on the village green, that he might have an airing, there, in all probability, to be teased by the local loafers. A subscription for Tom Sayers, the prize-fighter, was headed by Lord Palmerston, and subscribed to by most of the members of the House of Commons of the day. Prize-fighting, cock-fighting, bull- and bear-baiting, rat-hunting, dog-fighting, fights between men and dogs, and the like, were favorite pastimes not only of the masses, but also of the gentry, not an hundred years ago.

The great Prime Minister of the early days of Queen Victoria, Lord Melbourne, remarked that he liked the Order of the Garter, because "there is no damned merit connected with it!"

There are people in the world who are of a very coarse-grained moral fibre, of a very animal make-up, people who do not realize that it was not the absence of costume, but the presence of innocence, which made the

happiness of the garden of Eden. A disproportionate number of these people are inhabitants of the British Isles. There are many fortunate results due to their predominating animal characteristics, but there are also disagreeable features of that same temperament, that even the most friendly critic may not overlook. The intense love of sport is founded upon this virile temperament, which must, of course, have its bad side. Fortunately for them they have been the nation who have undertaken, and, be it said, accomplished, some of the greatest feats of conquering and governing, that the world has known. These adventures over-seas, and their untiring devotion to sport at home, have subdued and kept within bounds the animal side of them, though it has, and does still, crop out at times in evil practices.

A people of this type, somewhat indifferent to intellectual interests of any kind, are almost driven to exercise in some form, and their climate is a still further incentive.

Possibly the greatest foe to an orderly and useful life is monotony. The human mind, and the human body, wear out easily if they are subjected day in and day out, to a steady repetition of the same thing. The brain worker must change from his mathematics to a novel, or from history to the study of a new language, or he finds his mind getting rusty. The man who goes from house to office and back again, seeing the same faces, doing the same duties, conning over the same figures; or the teacher going over and over again the same tasks; or the judge hearing every day the same round of quarrels, definitions and criticisms, grow restless and tired. No one of these may recognize that monotony is at the bottom of his troubles, but the drip, drip, drip, wears the stone away. Drink, dissipation, wickedness of various kinds are put down to various causes-to disappointment, to failure, to lack of self-control-but in reality, back of all these is monotony. These failures and shipwrecks could not stand the deadly strain of such a life, and did not realize that change was the medicine they needed. For the great mass of men, to go away, to travel, to change the whole environment of life, is impossible. Just here is where sport comes in in our artificial civilization to help us out. In Great Britain, for example, there are some thirty thou

sand cricket and foot-ball clubs alone, the members of which come from all classes of society. Hands from the factories, clerks in small shops, tradespeople, and the lesser professional men, all take a hand. All through the English provinces there are no distinctions of class at their games.

This rather heavy, muscular people keep their health, and their heads, and their happiness, by this almost universal participation in some form of sport. It is their way of letting off steam, which every individual and every nation must have for safety's sake, in some form or other. If one computed the amount of wealth and territory brought to acknowledge the British flag by travellers, explorers, sportsmen, by adventurous botanists, fishermen and the like, the two hundred odd millions spent for sport annually would seem a small sum indeed.

Newspapers of the most conservative bias devote columns every morning to the doings of the sportsmen. Cricket, foot-ball, racing, hunting, in all their details, are chronicled and discussed, and advertised, with the same seriousness, as are speeches in parliament, dispatches from the seat of war, and international diplomatic affairs. The classic races, such as the Derby, the Oaks, the Grand National, are the theme of long newspaper articles months and months before they take place; and the betting odds against this and that horse are published each morning six months or more before he is to run, as regularly as the stock-market quotations.

If the King's horse, or the Prime Minister's horse wins the Derby, or any one of the great classic races, the owner, as he leads the horse back to the paddock, is received with tumultuous cheering. This is true of any owner fortunate enough to win such a race, but for the King, or a popular statesman, the ovation is almost frenzied. There, at any rate, the whole population is unanimous to a man; a good sportsman is universally popular.

Prowess at any sport is counted upon as a telling factor in the availability of a candidate for office. A candidate for parliamentary honors, lets it be known as widely as possible, that he is an old "Blue," of either Oxford or Cambridge; or that he has played for England at cricket or foot-ball, or won honors in some one or other of their many games, or been an adventurous

traveller, or a great hunter or fisherman. These things help his candidacy, if not more, quite as much as any qualities of intellect, unless he be a statesman who has already won his spurs.

The stranger, whether American or other foreigner, is at a loss to understand much of the workings of the political, and social life of England until he has become thoroughly imbued with the idea, that sport is a much more serious, and much more widely distributed interest here, than anywhere else in the world. In England, some form of sport is either the reminiscence or the avocation of practically every man who has been, or is physically capable of playing a game, or taking part in some form of field sports.

It is the only country in the world which supports not only a number of weekly and monthly periodicals devoted to sport, but also two, if not more, daily journals exclusively given over to the chronicling of racing and game playing. The Sportsman is a recognized and well-edited daily paper, to be found at every club and in many houses. The betting odds, present and prospective, the official starting prices, appear daily, as well as columns of news dealing with the exercise from day to day and the comparative merits of all horses in training.

The King breeds and races horses, and is the conspicuous and, be it said, a long way the most popular, person present at all the great race meetings. The Prince of Wales is one of the half-dozen best shots in England, and I am not far wrong in saying that his prowess as a shot does more to endear him to Englishmen than any other ability he may have. The Speaker of the House of Commons fences, and shoots, and rides to hounds. Lord Brassey is a yachtsman of reputation, who has devoted himself to the service of the Navy as an editor, and has ruled a distant colony with distinction. Lord Onslow is an authority on harness horses, and a big game shooter of long experience, as well as a valuable servant of the state; and so one might go on with an interminable list of distinguished Englishmen who are as well known for their prowess at some form of sport as for their ability, uprightness and self-sacrifice as political servants of their country.

The very speech of the Englishman savours of sport. "He did it off his own bat." "He put his money on the wrong horse." "This is a painful game." "Let us," or "we had better change the bowling." "I don't think he can go the distance." "It is an odds on chance," or about anything the Englishman is apt to express his feelings in the words of the bookmaker and say: "Oh, I should call it a three to one,” or "a five to one," or "a six to four chance." "It isn't cricket," or "it isn't playing the game" refers to any underhand or not quite straight conduct. These and countless other expressions serve to express distinctions and differences even of a subtle kind. If you have hunted in Ireland for a winter you come away convinced that most of the stock phrases in conversation are invented by the horses. The universal use of "fit" to express one's condition, and of "feed" for eat, are constant reminders of that habitation, dearest of all to the hearts of so many Englishmen, the Stable.

I have never forgotten the slovenly grooms, the staring coats of the horses, the bad smells, and the generally unkempt appearance of the stables of the King of Spain in Madrid. They spoil their children in the Latin countries and neglect their horses; while in England the stables are in many cases better and more comfortably furnished than the nurseries. As a result, both the English children and the English horses are superior! There is a kindness which is cruel and a harshness which is kind. This nation of sportsmen make this subtle distinction unerringly. Why, one asks. They are not philosophers, No. They think little of the intricacies and niceties of living, and discuss such matters even less. It is God's air, and life on the land, and wholesome bodies which guide them aright in such matters. It is only of late, when the population is shifting from the land to the towns, that they seem to be losing the sterling qualities that are their heritage. They are the last race of all to be fuddled and disturbed by new religions, new theories of government, new solutions of the problem of existence; in short, that effervesence of semi-education which is posing as the interpreter of God and man all over the democratic world. We in America are so much older, so much more weary than they are, and it is with