Both Americans and Englishmen can learn much from each other. It would not detract in any way from the polite charm of English games if the weight-throwers, for instance, took the trouble to learn the proper technique of the hammer and shot ; and our track athletes might get much more fun out of their training, not injure, and for the matter of that, often better, their chances of doing well in competition if they trained a bit more easily and varied their exer cises more. Our undergraduates might with advantage learn to depend less on professional trainers ; it was very pleasant to see the Oxford Cambridge team at Berkeley Oval in Igor with out a single professional attendant, not even a rubber. There is nothing inherently ungentle manly in the mere employment of a professional helper, and a trainer or even a rubber may be as harmless as a Greek tutor or a riding-master. Yet there is no doubt that the more completely the professional atmosphere is removed, even as exemplified in the diluted form of professional trainers and helpers, the more pleasing is the atmosphere surrounding amateur games. Many such tangible and practical lessons we can learn from our English cousins, but things that result from inherent differences of temperament or social conditions cannot informally be borrowed or ex changed. No more can we hope, nor should we desire, to borrow offhand those superficial aspects of English varsity sport which make it most charming. You may fill the Hudson from shore to shore with eight-oared crews, but you cannot thereby construct an American Henley. On the
day of the Oxford-Cambridge game the young gentlemen who are presently going to eat their hearts out on the track may assemble at their dressing-room in frock coats and top hats in the most casual manner in the world ; should a Cor nell or Princeton team present themselves at Mott Haven in such a costume, they would be laughed at from Portland to San Francisco. The polite charm, reposefulness, and insouciance which ap peal so strongly to those accustomed to the overwrought atmosphere of American collegiate athletics are not peculiar to English sport, but are the natural results of a society as old and aristocratic as that of England. Similar differ ences would be just as certainly met with in comparing English and American universities, or dinners or architecture or country houses or afternoon teas.
The big and important things for young Ameri cans to think about in going into track athletics are fairness and frankness and courtesy and generosity. Strength and seriousness and sand and a fighting-edge they have in plenty. It is no business of theirs to worry about the urbanity and amenity of the sports of their English cousins any more than it is their business to lament be cause the cloistered calm of Oxford or Cambridge is not completely duplicated at Ann Arbor or Chicago. If they go about their training sanely and sensibly and win, and are beaten like sports men, they can afford to neglect gilding the lily. The virile and austere virtues they have. In due time, if they order their sports properly, the graces shall be added unto them.