Chapter V: The Menaces of Modern Sport

“_Imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis._”

JUVENAL.

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.

It is about some English jockeys in America--

“Our jockeys are having a hard time, in a way, inasmuch as they
are being kept under the closest surveillance by Pinkerton
detectives. They are practically caged off from the public, are
escorted to the scales and paddock, are not allowed to speak to
any one except an employer, and then only when mounting, and
their valets must wear a distinctive uniform, with numbers on
their sleeves. This is reform with a vengeance, and by no means
agreeable to some of our young swells, who are also shadowed
after the races.”

“_By sports like these are all their cares beguiled!_”

Was Goldsmith a prophet?

It is not always easy to remember that the professed aim of the Jockey Club is “the furtherance of the breeding and preservation of the English thoroughbred horse.”

Yet to-day the officers of foreign armies buy Australian walers. They won’t purchase English stallions. I belong to the “_Cercle Privée civil et militaire_” of Bruges, a great military centre. Every day the General commanding the district and his staff are in the Club. They tell me that English horses are no longer looked upon as they were upon the Continent.

Does not this “_give one furiously to think_,” as my friend the General said here the other morning? Doping in the interests of the gambling market seems to be beginning to tell!

The gambling industry is organized with consummate skill and great business capacity.

Gambling by post is almost incredibly upon the increase. In Middleburg and Flushing there are twelve huge betting firms. One person employs ninety people in his office, and has his own printing establishment, which is always glutted with work.

Often £1000 is received by one firm in a single day--nearly all in small bets, and all from England. The post-offices of Dutch towns of the size of Middleburg or Flushing normally keep in stock stamps which will supply the needs of a population of 20,000 persons. Now, these two towns are compelled to keep enough to supply a population of 200,000--all for the “furtherance of the breeding and preservation,” etc., etc.

Here is another significant fact which may possibly elucidate the recent and somewhat cryptic utterance, “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton just as certainly as the battle of Spion Kop was lost upon the playing fields of Sandhurst.”

The fact is this ...

In the issue of _The War Office Times_, May 25, 1905, occurs a flagrant puff of a bookmaker, who without the humour of a less eminent _confrère_ who described himself as a “brass finisher” in the census returns, calls himself a “high-class turf-accountant.”

“We strongly advise any of our readers who require a high-class Turf-accountant to send for Mr. ----’s book of rules, bound in leather, which will be sent post free to applicants. We have convinced ourselves that this is a thoroughly genuine business, and, as such, we have no hesitation in recommending it to our readers.”

I have the book “bound in leather,” and a good many others also, which I acquired for the purposes of this article.

And precious and elaborate productions they are! The ingenuity of red morocco and gilding, of alluring propositions and the suggestion of a bludgeon-sturdy honesty deserve the highest praise. I was especially delighted with the telegraphic code of one hero, which used the names of fish to symbolize the amount of “investments.” “Salmon,” for example, means “put me ten pounds on.”

All the denizens of ocean are used save one....

With commendable modesty, or possibly a fellow feeling, this worthy has omitted “shark.”

One has said enough to outline--I hope vividly and strongly--how Sport is being spoilt by gambling.

Sport, thank goodness, is not yet retrograde owing to this curse. But it may be. Let us all remember that progress is merely the power of seeing new beauties. The more Sport progresses unhindered by gambling, the sooner will it take its high place in life and fulfil its noble destiny.

And every sportsman can do something to help that progress.

The fiery Erasmus writes this of Sir Thomas More, who was a thorough sportsman, to his German friend, Ulrich von Hutten:--

“Gambling of all kinds, balls, dice and such like he detests. None of that sort are to be found about him. In short, he is the best type of sportsman.”

“_Nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus._”

* * * * *

NOTE.--_Since this essay was written, three short articles appeared in the sporting columns of the _Daily Mail_ which are a striking corroboration of my contentions. All the articles appeared within a few days of each other, and I print parts of them as an appendix._

FOOTBALL AND ALCOHOL

HOW PLAYERS MAY LENGTHEN THEIR CAREERS

By William McGregor.

I dealt a few days ago with the question of what constituted a
sensible diet for footballers, and hinted that the so-called
special training which teams undergo on the eve of a great
encounter was often prejudicial rather than beneficial.

Now, a well-known medical man, who fills the position of
official doctor to one of our leading football clubs, met me on
the evening of the day that the article appeared and said
(excuse the apparent egotism, but it is necessary for the
purpose of the article), “That was a really good article of
yours in the London _Daily Mail_. You put the matter precisely
as I should put it, as a medical man. You might follow it up
with an article pointing out that there are two abuses which
footballers suffer from, viz. errors in regard to eating, and
errors in regard to drinking. If you can put in a strong plea
for either the abolition of alcohol, or the sparing use of
alcohol by footballers, you will be doing the game a good
service, and you will be doing the players a good service.”

I then remembered a little incident which occurred at the Aston
Villa ground early in the season. The occasion was a match
played during that tropical weather, weather which was utterly
unfit for football. Violent exercise such as football imposed a
very severe strain upon the men that day.

As soon as the interval was over, a medical man came up to me,
and in quite excited accents said, “I say, Mr. McGregor, do you
know that they have been giving the visiting team spirits
during the interval? I have never heard of such a foolish
proceeding. Why, alcohol is the worst possible thing for
footballers to have at any time, but more especially on a day
like this. You could not have anything more heating than
spirits.”

Speaking from a general rather than a professional or technical
experience, I agreed with him. I asked him, as a medical man,
what he would have given the men under such peculiar
circumstances. His answer was, “At any rate, I should not have
given them alcohol. I do not know that I should have given them
anything. The best thing would have been for them to have
rinsed their mouths out with cold water.”

CHAMPAGNE OR LEMONS?

In a match which took place in the Midlands last season, the
home team gave a particularly poor display in the second half,
and one of the directors said to me, “They have been behaving
foolishly to our men. The trainer gave them champagne during
the interval, and I do not think that is a good drink for them
to have. The momentary feeling of exhilaration following a
glass of champagne soon wears off.”

If the form manifested by the team which had the champagne that
day may be taken as a criterion as to the merits of champagne
as a stimulant for football purposes, then all I can say is,
that I never want to see a team receive such a stimulant again.
It may not have been the champagne that caused their poor form;
but at any rate their play was poor.

I recall another interesting instance in which champagne played
a part. I am going back a long time now, but the circumstances
were exceptional.

Away in the remote eighties, Moseley (as they often were then)
were in possession of the Midland Counties Rugby Challenge Cup,
and one of their supporters was interested in Aston Villa. I do
not know whether it was Kenneth Wilson or not, for Kenneth
Wilson, I may say, was a Pollokshields man, who was in business
in Birmingham. He was a splendid athlete, and played for Aston
Villa, and also for Moseley under Rugby rules simultaneously. I
expect he had something to do with the incident.

At any rate, the Cup made its appearance at Perry Barr on the
day that Aston Villa were playing an English Cup tie with
Darwen. Now the Aston Villa team of that period, captained by
the great Archie Hunter, was as bonny a set in a social sense
as I have ever known. They were grand footballers, and played
the game for all they were worth when they were on the field.
But it was a loose and lax age as compared with the present
football era, and during the interval some one filled the Cup
with champagne, and the Villa players drank to the prosperity
of the Moseley Club--and very bad football they played after
the interval, too.

I do not suppose for a moment that any one player had much
champagne, but from what I could see of their demeanour, I came
to the conclusion that champagne was a bad thing to play
football on. At any rate, the Villa had the greatest difficulty
in avoiding defeat at the hands of Darwen. If I remember
aright, the great Hugh McIntyre, who died in London last year,
and was better known as a Blackburn Rover, kept goal
brilliantly for Darwen that day.

THE GREATEST ENEMY

You hear of well-known footballers kicking over the traces,
passing from club to club, and marring what might have been
great reputations. If you will look into the history of these
men you will find that in nineteen cases out of twenty their
bad relations with their employers are due to the fact that
they are accustomed to imbibe too much alcohol. Alcohol is,
indeed, the footballer’s greatest enemy; at any rate, to put it
simply and straightforwardly, no man ever played football the
better for taking alcohol, and many men have played it
infinitely worse by reason of their indulgence therein.

Every football manager likes to get together a team of
tee-totalers. If you take the records of the greatest players,
or perhaps I might say the great players who have had
phenomenally long and honourable careers, you will find that in
nearly every case they were either life-long abstainers or
rigidly moderate men. I could give many instances if space
permitted.

FOOTBALL BOOKMAKERS

WHAT REALLY ATTRACTS LEAGUE CROWDS?

“The public are getting rather weary,” writes a correspondent,
“of the professional football promoters’ periodical rigmarole
under the heading of ‘Betting at Football Matches.’

“Why not make it ‘Betting on Football‘? Here he would have
‘copy’ for every day in the week, as long as professional
football lasts.

“I cannot speak for the south, but, as for the north, it is a
fact that football betting is rife in Newcastle, Sunderland,
Middlesbrough--thanks to the professional football promoter. It
is not done at the matches, but beforehand, on the combination
football betting coupon system, but it is betting all the same.

“Thousands and thousands of football coupons are distributed
weekly by bookmakers among the working men at the big
factories, ship-yards, etc.

“This betting is the sole reason why many of these working men
and others, who know practically nothing of football, take an
interest in the League and attend matches in connection with
the same.

“The betting is not on a particular match, but on a combination
of matches.

“Football loafing and betting will always go hand in hand.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. What is
more, in this case it would not pay to see. Certainly, the
professional football promoter has a great deal to answer for.”

DISHONESTY IN SPORT

STRONG EFFORTS TO BE MADE TO STOP IMPERSONATION

The recent case of a young Hereford sprinter who, by
impersonating another runner, secured a prize of the value of
£4, and who was ordered by the Bench to pay three guineas
towards the cost of the prosecution and refund the prize or its
equivalent value, shows that the justices are doing all they
can to assist the Amateur Athletic Association in preserving
amateur athletics for the pure sportsman.

It is to be regretted that such instances are by no means rare,
and the Amateur Athletic Association has several cases in hand
at the present time. The Association is, however, determined to
put a stop to the practice.

The trick of impersonating amateurs and thereby winning prizes
at athletic sports is, in fact, as old as the hills, and years
ago used to be carried on unblushingly and free from detection.

One of the earliest cases on record was that of a man at
Ashford. His head was as innocent of hair as a billiard ball,
and to play the part properly it was necessary for him to wear
a wig. He was winning his race easily enough, when his hirsute
adornment was blown off by the wind, and the attempted fraud
ended in failure.

Quite recently there were two brothers in the army, one an
amateur and the other a professional. The latter impersonated
the former with sufficient success as to secure the prize; but
although the fraud was afterwards discovered, it was felt that
the evidence was not strong enough to secure a conviction.

In a similar case in the Northampton district a couple of years
ago, the judge took a serious view of the case, and the
offender received exemplary punishment.

Strong action is undoubtedly needed to stamp out the practice,
and the Amateur Athletic Association will leave no stone
unturned in its endeavours to purify it.

VAGROM MEN