The Cruise of the Branwen

INTRODUCTORY best performers, whether they be English, Welsh, Scotch, or Irish, in the several events ; and to the pre-eminence of the Olympic meeting in athletic importance every other event must this year be subordinated. That this last fact had not been wholly grasped at first by a large section of the uninstructed public was rather unfortunately evidenced by the needless discussion concerning the Belgian crew at Henley, when some of those gentlemen who seem to prefer every other country to their own, and never hesitate to attribute the basest motives to the powers that be, started the agitation that the winners of the Grand Challenge Cup had been unfairly treated by the rules to be enforced during the rowing season of 1908. These hasty critics apparently did not know that these rules had been passed some months before last Henley Regatta began, and that every member of the Belgian eight was perfectly aware of them when they rowed. The correspondence was only stopped when the Belgian eaptain, explaining that his club was quite competent to look after its own interests, pointed out that even if he had been specially asked to enter for the Grand Challenge on July I, 1908, he could not have done so, because the Belgians were naturally going to save their crew for the Olympic Regatta of July 28, when they hoped to meet not a single club or a single college, but a representative British eight. I only mention this because it may be taken as typical of the dislocations momentarily necessary this season in our usual quiet calendar of annual II