'I Believe' and other essays Part 13

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 b.u.t.ter to four o'clock.

In the s.p.a.ce 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 cla.s.ses. Now it is certainly far better that the Scotch mechanic should spend his Sat.u.r.day 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 n.o.bility 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation 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'etre_ 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 a.s.sailed 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, c.u.mberland, at the N.S.C., "Wonderland," or even at the Belsize, is absolutely a square fight? Who knows whether the blind old heathen G.o.ddess 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 n.o.blesse_ 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 _manque_ from the true sportsman's point of view. The men of carrion pa.s.sions, and the army of muddy knaves who live by the exploitation and bespatterment of the n.o.blest 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 ill.u.s.trative 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 Privee 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,"