That climate plays no inconsiderable part in deciding the results of international contests, particularly those between English and American athletes, is a fact vividly enough demonstrated by the many instances in which athletes have gone completely off form on foreign fields, and testi fied to almost unanimously by American athletes who have contested in England, and to a less extent by Englishmen who have competed here. As far as the ability to perform up to one's ordi nary standard is concerned, Americans seem to be more hindered by the English climate than Englishmen are hindered by ours. To the high strung American athlete the mild, humid climate of England is peculiarly enervating, and the longer he stays in it the worse his condition seems to get. Men who have kept in fairly good condition by exercising on shipboard, and then have contested a few days after reaching England, have done far better than those who have spent considerable time in becoming — as they hoped —acclimated. Englishmen, on the other hand, who have contested over here have become ner vous, out of sorts, and have felt unfit generally, and yet have surprised themselves by performing as well as they had ever performed when feel ing in good condition at home. The conclusion which this suggests is that there is something in the American climate — by which in this place we must mean the climate in the neighborhood of New York, Boston, and New Haven —which stimulates an athlete's nervous energy. Removed from this stimulus the American athlete loses snap and becomes lazy and listless ; the English athlete, at least the sprinter, when put into it can become out of sorts and almost ill, and yet as far as mere performances go retain his normal form. Arthur Duffey had as good an opportunity as any one thoroughly to test the effects of English climate upon an American sprinter. Duffey con tested in all parts of the United Kingdom for several seasons, and the results of his stay abroad were always the same. " I have noticed," said he, " that my first races were always the fastest, and that gradually my form fell off, until, by the end of the season, I would wonder how it was that it was ever possible to accomplish the phe nomenal time that I was credited with." Mr. John Corbin, who won the half mile for Harvard at Mott Haven in 1893, and Mr. J. L. Bremer, Harvard '96, who held the world's record in his day in the low hurdles, both spent considerable time as graduate students at Oxford. Mr. Bremer found that he steadily lost snap and suppleness, and he was beaten in the quarter mile in time distinctly inferior to his best in America. Mr. Corbin's experience was similar, and he came to the conclusion that " clearly the effect of the English climate is to reduce the athlete's power both of sprinting per se and of sprinting at the finish of the race." That the American climate has just the opposite effect on English sprinters was suggested by the experience of the English team which contested here in 1895. The heat was extremely oppressive at the time the games were held in New York, most of the English team were more or less under the weather, and sev eral were positively ill, yet one of the sprinters in spite of his wretched condition went consid erably above his previous best. The enervating effect of the English climate on American athletes has been shown on various occasions ever since 1869, when the Harvard four-oar was sent over to compete on the Thames. With the same amount of work that would have been sufficient at home the men became so stale that two substi tutes had to be put in the boat. In the race the " subs "— probably because of the brevity of their training—pulled the strongest oars in the boat. The Yale track team which met Oxford in 1894 had a similar experience — accentuated probably by the fact that instead of training at Brighton or elsewhere on the coast they trained in the warm Thames Valley. Cornell and Yale crews which have rowed at Henley have suffered the same sorry experience. The Harvard-Yale team, which went abroad in 1899, got their land legs at Brighton in comparatively bracing sea air. Instead of attempting to acclimate themselves in England, they did their hard training in this country, tried to keep in fair shape while on board ship, and only took a few days for preparation and for getting the feel of the Queen's Club track. As a result the team was in better shape than any other team that had been sent abroad, and had not one man been actually ill, it would almost certainly have won. The acknowledged superiority of English distance runners would suggest that in the long run the English climate assists in producing stay ing power. Certainly the Englishmen have that quality, and in the acquiring of it an atmosphere which discourages speed and conserves rather than excites nervous activity may well be assumed to play a part.
One cannot go far in the consideration of in ternational games and the lessons to be learned from them without becoming entangled in the eternal question of the relative merits of the English and American attitudes toward sport. The lament over the seriousness with which we take our college contests has long ceased to be original, and the charm of English outdoor sports is something that we all have got into the habit of admitting with a sigh. That we have taken, and do take, our sports too painfully goes without saying, and it is not strange that an undergradu ate, pounded round a football field for weeks in the autumn until he can scarcely look a pair of moleskins in the face, or going a bit stale as the spring gets warmer and time trials come every day, should dream enviously of the lot of the Oxford or Cambridge blue, of Henley, and of track and football games that are like a garden party. But
in thus appreciating the charm that may surround outdoor sport it is not wise too lightly to disre gard sport's sterner and more austere virtues, and it is not only unwise, but absurd, to put in the same category differences of rules and regulations which may be changed and transplanted in a day with differences of race and temperamental make up which are inherent and which can only be changed by the gradual influence of time.
The faults and virtues of English and Ameri can sport are the faults and virtues of English and American life. The zeal for success and the determination to achieve it at all hazards are no more typical of the American undergraduate overtraining himself for the mile run than they are of the undergraduate's father following the pace of his business until he drops from nervous prostration. We are but as our fathers are. The young Oxonian, neglecting to master the technique of shot-putting or hammer-throwing, and trusting to his strength and sand and pluck to pull him through somehow on the day of the games, is no more typical of his country than is his country's army, drifting pleasantly along with its polo-playing officers until there arrives some Boer War reckoning, and dogged strength and sand and pluck have to pay the price that staggers hu manity. Smith of Oxford doesn't worry because he isn't built that way ; Jones of Harvard does worry because he is built that way, and it is as absurd to tell him that he might get more fun out of his running if he didn't worry as to tell him he might cut a bigger figure in the world if he were four inches taller. Jones doesn't worry because, he likes to worry ; he has run on easy going paper chases and across country in his vaca tions, and he knows, you may be sure, when running's fun. But Jones knows he has been chosen to run against Yale, and that is a very big and serious thing to him. He doesn't want to place the victory above the sport, but a race is a race, and when you're in a race it's your business to win. That seems to be logic and sound ethics. Jones doesn't see why you should wait until the starter's pistol snaps before taking the thing seri ously, and if by any scourging of the flesh he can honorably improve his chances of winning, he is going to do it. Perhaps Jones, in his strenuous ness, will go stale and not do as well by his col lege as he would have done if he had taken things more easily. Perhaps Smith, with his lack of preparation, will throw the hammer about half as far as he ought to or jump a foot or so less than he has often jumped before. Perhaps it will be the other way — and there you are.
There are, it will be observed, two points of view which it is difficult to reconcile. Sport is more important than victory, and when sport be comes a painful task it ceases to be sport. On the other hand, if you have been chosen to repre sent your college in a contest, that contest be comes without a reason for being, and you become a sort of quitter if you do not do as well in it as you might have prepared yourself to do. Ethi cally speaking, there is little difference between failing to be properly prepared and failing to do one's best. Mr. Corbin, considering the English attitude toward sport from the seriously ethical standpoint, says : " There is something peculiarly displeasing in a public opinion that makes sports manship a young man's ideal and then permits, even encourages, him to do less at it than he rea sonably and honorably can. . . . If athletics have any real reason for being it is that in the way of sport they train young men to take up the struggle for existence and, win or lose, to do their honorable best in it. To tell them that transient personal convenience is better than thoroughness and devotion is, in any modern theory of life, the depth of immorality." One retort which might be made to such an austere argument as this, vig orous and admirable as it is in spirit, is that it tends to confuse terms, — that sportsmanship and athletic efficiency are assumed to be synonymous. Sportsmanship, as a national ideal, we assume to mean the general attitude toward life of a man whose body and mind have been trained in sports and who conducts himself in the world of affairs with that same courage, frankness, and generosity which he would use on track or field. Such an ideal is not necessarily inconsistent with the somewhat dilettante methods of training enjoyed by the English undergraduates. It is very easy to carry this rigidly ethical point of view too far when applying it to so flexible a subject as sport. A Harvard or Yale half-back who would break train ing on the night before the annual game would bring upon himself disgrace which he might never be able quite to live down. The same man might be chosen by his table-mates at Memorial Hall or the Yale Commons to represent them in an inter-table tennis match, might eat so many dishes of ice-cream or strawberries that he couldn't put up a respectable game, and the delinquency would be dismissed as a joke. It is so impossible, in fact, rigidly to define any attitude toward training that will fit all conditions, all individuals, and perfectly reconcile the desire to make sport a pleasure with the determination to do one's best to win, that the whole question appears to us one less of ethics than of taste and common sense.