see in sport nothing but a "serious proposition." The business of their heroes is not to amuse themselves, but to win; not to delight in their strength and prowess, but to show that these United States can whip the universe. And, as they count up their gains, they regard lightly the outrage committed upon the traditions of the runningpath. "Track tactics" are the best proof of cleverness, and probably nothing pleased them better in the contest of four years ago than the race wherein they punched an arrogant competitor in the ribs.

In other words, those who would win at the Olympic Games, we are told, must learn all the lessons of professionalism. They must not pursue their sport with the cheerful joyousness of amateurs. They must not let running and jumping be the relaxations of a busy life. They must be runners and jumpers and nothing else. They must listen to no music save the gramaphone of their trainer. They must obey a new code of morals and manners, the first article in which is that it is a crime to be excelled by any man of any nation other than your own. The new code will not make for international comity. It will do nothing to encourage sport. But it will give plenty of work to the "rooters," and it will elevate sharp practice to the highest place among the virtues.

For our part, we cannot deplore the failure of our English athletes, concerning which so much has been said by exultant Americans. Our organization may be bad; if it be so, it does not matter. Our system of training may be devised by amateurs; perhaps it is none the worse for that. At any rate, we travel across the seas to do our best and to watch the best of others. Even if we do not win, we shall have attained our end. But, object our critics, this is not enough. The failure of England in athletic

sports, it is said, is a clear proof of degeneracy. We have taught the trick of running and jumping to others, and have instantly fallen behind ourselves. What does it matter, so long as we have avoided the pit of professionalism? It matters everything, says the noisy press of New York. Henceforth England is a back number in the world's history. If our champions cannot run faster and jump farther than the champions of other countries, she is "down and out" for ever. Poor England! Still poorer Germany, who has not given a much better account of herself than Italy and Greece!

The fact that the Americans lead in the Olympic Games proves neither the decadence of English courage nor the supremacy of American wisdom. It is a triumph of professionalism, and of professionalism alone. It proves that at a given moment America has trained more efficient athletes than any other part of the globe-proves that, and no more. He who wins an Olympic prize returns to America what is far greater than a hero "a made man." He gets a post as trainer, and turns out other victors successful as himself. And it is precisely this spirit of professionalism, this lust to win, which we hope will never be introduced into Great Britain. Wherever professionalism has flourished there has been an end of sport. We all remember the curse which the idle athletes brought upon Athens. Euripides describes them, "lustrous in gold, like living statues decking the streets"; and when old age came upon them "they fell and perished like a threadbare coat." They were the worst citizens, for they knew neither how to fight nor how to give counsel; and they would not work, because they thought that he who had won a prize should live for ever at the public expense. So the Olympic Games, once blessed by God, fell into professionalism and dis

repute. And if a better wisdom do not prevail, if we do not all praise a great feat nobly done, then the meetings called Olympic to-day will bring nothing but bad blood and misunderstanding to the world.

A better wisdom is not likely to prevail. Whatever happens, the English athlete is belabored. Some years ago, in a moment of stress, we were reproached, and justly reproached, with an undue worship of "flannelled fools" and "muddied oafs." To-day the reproof hurled at the head of the nation is reversed. Our fools wear their flannels with too little zeal; our oafs are not sufficiently muddied. It is not difficult to see who is in the right of it. If Englishmen are wise, they will turn a deaf ear to their American critics. We hope sincerely that the day will never come when we shall estimate athletic prowess in pounds, shillings, and pence, when we shall rely upon Government grants for the training of our champions. That is not our way. We play our games with skill and energy, even though the gate may be small. The Americans purchase their baseball heroes with thousands of dollars. They estimate their prowess and activity in the familiar currency. They build amphitheatres, in which hundreds of thousands of "fans" may sit in comfort. And doubtless for them running and jumping are but variations of base-ball. They see money in them, and think it no shame to carry their "rooters" along too.

Above all, the unseemly jealousies and tiresome wranglings which have always disgraced the Olympic Games are a clear condemnation of international sport. We do not care if the American journalists, in a pause between two rounds of the dog-fight, draw ridiculous conclusions from the failure of the English athletes. We care a good deal for the ill-feeling which may be engendered in the false name

of sport between once friendly peoples. Commines said that princes should meet only to share their pleasures. What is true of princes is obviously untrue of nations. The democracies of to-day have not the nonchalance of kings. They may meet together in peace and war. They must keep their sports rigidly apart, if they are to be good friends and decent enemies. None who witnessed the "games" at the White City four years ago will ever forget the pitiful display of ill-feeling and bad manners. In such contests as these the victors can hardly take pleasure, the vanquished can surely feel no pain. In four years' time the nations of the earth will meet in Berlin. We shall regret it exceedingly. The wisest counsel that could be given is that the Olympic Games should never be held again. If this counsel be not accepted, then let us send our athletes, where they are bidden, to do the best they may in the fair spirit of amateurs. And if they fail, let us not raise our voice aloud in protest or regret.

The truth is that sport is at its best when it is least conscious of itself. Cups, records, championships are mere disturbances of its proper office. The royal and ancient game of golf, for instance, still has its

home in Scotland. It is Scotland which imposes its laws and upholds its honor. It is not Scotland which carries off the most of the prizes. Shall we say, therefore, that Scotland is decadent, degenerate, wornout? No: rather let us congratulate the Scots on the good sense which forbids them to turn their national game into a stern business, or to specialize, with the fury of professionals, in what should be a pleasant recreation. Wherever we look, we shall find the true purpose of sport obscured. Cricket, we are told, is losing its hold upon the public. It is failing as a spectacle. While baseball, as we have said, attracts a mob

of 100,000 citizens of New York, the best advertised encounter of the cricket-field draws no more than 5000. Princely fortunes are made in America by the bold purchase of expert players. There is scarcely a county in England which does not find itself pinched in its resources, though not one of them has the smallest ambition to drag a profit out of the sport. The deficiency matters little, so long as the wickets are pitched on Saturday afternoons throughout the length and breadth of England, for after all two-and-twenty genuine players are worth a thousand lazy onlookers.

And when we examine the argument of those who demand excitement and sensation of a cricket match, in the light of history, we shall speedily recognize its absurdity. Cricket was not made for the spectators. It was the spectators who came to the cricket match. If they do not like it they may stay at home, and the game will be none the worse for their absence. It is easy for them to understand the roughand-tumble of a football match, and with luck they may see a man break his leg, when one member of the league opposes another. But cricket demands for its appreciation a subtle knowledge, which large crowds do not possess. The cunning of the bowler is pitted against the mastery of the batsman in a contest, which always varies with the skill and style of the time, and yet is ever the same. We may still get the same pleasure, if we have the mind and the eye for it, from seeing Barnes and Foster attack the Australians, as Nyren felt when he watched David Harris, that classic among underhand bowlers, who, with his high action, "seemed to push the ball from him," baffling the skill of "Silver Billy." But this is not the pleasure that the mob demands. There is no scandal in it. A record cannot be broken every day. There are happily

few disputes in the cricket field, and the jaded spectator goes home in discontent, and confides to the newspaper that there is something the matter with cricket.

To increase the speed of cricket, to add to its "sensations," would speedily bring ruin upon it. It is leisurely in its essence. It is a game for clear skies and hot summer days. It is, moreover, an art in which the means should be reverenced as highly as the end. In the golden age of the game it seemed as important to make an elegant gesture as to score a run. Nyren, the first and greatest historian of the game, tells us little enough of big scores. He never forgets the beauty of pose, the grace of movement, which in his eyes ennobled the heroes of Hambledon. He thinks it would have "delighted an artist to see Beldham make himself up to hit a ball." He is sure, in his homely way, that "Phidias would have taken Harris for a model." In days of leisure these were the proofs of excellence-pose and movement. The amateurs of the game did not test their day's sport by the pace of the run-getting. Tom Walker once received 170 balls from David Harris without making a single run, and nobody thought him a bit the worse for it. When Aylward, in 1775, playing for Hambledon against All England, made the marvellous score of 167, he devoted two easy days to the task. The modern critics would have laughed his triumph to scorn.

The truth is, the one and only curse of cricket is the "spectator." He was invented with gate-money, test matches, international sport, and the other enemies of leisure and good-fellowship. When cricket is played for profit, and profit alone, it ceases to be a game, and becomes the foolish plaything of the majority. And if a swift return be not made to the ancient habit, then the mob will dictate to the

players how they shall play, as the mob dictates to the demagogues how they shall speak. There was a.time when cricket, like literature and the other arts, lived upon the generosity of patrons far too wise to prefer scandal to skill. In those days the game was free from the taint of professionalism. There was no gate-money when the enthusiasts met upon Broad Halfpenny to show what a single village might achieve against the united strength of England. If the "gentry" supported the game with their munificence, it was the villagers who defended the honor of Hambledon; and so keen were they for practice that they met on the downs every Tuesday, and drove (many of them) twenty miles for the chance of a game.

Their spirit was matched by the interest of wise amateurs. At a close finish between England and The Club there was always a quiet enthusiasm. "There was Sir Horace Mann," writes Nyren of one such scene, "walking about, outside the ground, cutting Blackwood's Magazine.

down the daisies with his stick-a habit with him when he was agitated; the old farmers leaning forward upon their tall old staves and the whole multitude perfectly still." The "multitude," we may be sure, was not large, nor did it come with shillings in its hands. Yet we would far rather that the scene described by Nyren could be matched upon the cricket fields of today than that we should be pestered by the bad feeling and false deductions of the Olympic Games. If fashion and sensationalism drive the mob to sports of greater speed and danger, if a friendly contest between two neighboring clubs afford no interest to those who love to encourage international rivalry on tin-trumpets, let the mob follow its inclination. For whatever else it may be, cricket is not a circus, and it would be far better that it should be driven back to the village-greens, where it found its origin, than yield a jot to the petulent demands of idle spectators.

Punch.

The death of "General" Booth, which we announce with great regret, closes a strange career, one of the most remarkable that our age has seen, and will set the world meditating on that fervent, forceful character and that keen, though, as some would say, narrow intelligence. Born of unrecorded parentage, educated anyhow, he had raised himself from a position of friendless obscurity to be the head of a vast organization not confined to this country or to the British race, but well known over half the world, and yielding to him an obedience scarcely less complete than that which the Catholic Church yields to the Roman Pontiff.

The Salvation Army was the creation of one man, or rather of a pair of human beings, for the late Mrs. Booth was scarcely less important to its early development than was her husband. The root-idea of William Booth's religion, the object of his missionary work, was "the saving of souls." Translated into other language, this means the establishment of a conviction in the minds of men, women, and children that they were reconciled to God, saved, and preserved to all eternity from the penalties of sin. We do not propose to enter on the delicate ground of theological discussion, or to argue for or against the truth or value of