Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

International Games 421 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