Olympic Games and the Duke of Westminster's appeal for £100,000

THE OLYMPIC GAMES. 25
any fund required for central training ground and
quarters, or for the transport of British represen-
tatives to and from Berlin and for their accommo-
dation while there. Several schemes have yet to
be submitted.
(e)
That in addition several sports governing
bodies were anxious to go beyond the mere dis-
covery and training of a limited number of athletes
and to make provision for placing the athletic
training of our youths on a permanent and satis-
factory footing. In such a manner that after the
Olympic Games of 1916, whether the nation
decided to continue the Olympic Games or not,
provision would have been made for steady progress
in physical efficiency.
The Committee reported accordingly, and the
appeal for £100,000 was issued. The appeal having
been issued over the signatures of those whom the
nation honours and trusts the decision rests with the
people of Great Britain.
The money is not needed and will not be used
to secure a " team of gladiators." It will be used to
create an organization which has hitherto not existed
—to support the amateur sports associations in
organizing and extending their respective sports
on scientific lines; to enable them to secure the best
men possible to represent the country at Berlin, and
to make the necessary arrangements at Berlin for
Great Britain's representatives. Whether more first
prizes will be gained at Berlin or not is another
matter and will depend on the ability of the men
sent—
Palmam qui meruit ferat.
If our country is
represented by its best men and those men are
afforded every facility to do their best for their
country, however unpleasant defeat might be, it would
not be humiliating.
I have tried as concisely, clearly, and temperately
as I could to give the point of view of the Special
Committee and have only to add that the Special
Committee and its chairman will gladly give way
to those more competent should the subscribers
to the fund consider that the work would be better
done by others. Whatever is done must be done
quickly, for time is an essential factor of the situa-
tion.
"
P
ROFESSIONALISM"
The bogey of " professionalism " (for a bogey
it undoubtedly is) was raised by a number of
correspondents in the course of the controversy,
and
The Times
dealt with the subject in a leading
article on September 13 as follows :—
It is plain, we hope, to those who have followed
the correspondence on the Olympic Games Fund
in our columns that the fears expressed by some as
to its possible employment in turning amateur
athletes into professionals are groundless. There
is no more risk of that happening than there is in the
case of the members of next year's Oxford boat
or Eton eleven, on both of which a considerable
sum of money will be spent before they appear at
Putney or Lord's. The maintenance of the Univer-
sity Barge, the wages of boatmen and other servants
of the O.U.B.C., the cost of a new light ship for the
race, the hire of launches, and a whole host of other
incidental expenses will be provided for, as they
have been for the last 70 years or so, out of funds
to which the actual members of the Oxford crew will
contribute a relatively insignificant proportion.
In the same way at Eton, only a modest fraction of
the money spent on the mowing and rolling of Upper
Club and Agar's Plough, the salaries of the staff
of professional coaches, and all the other odds and
ends that are part of the recognized scheme of Eton
cricket, will come out of the pockets of the boys who
eventually get their Eleven. Yet no one will dream
of accusing either of these bodies of young athletes
of being tainted with professionalism, because they
do not themselves defray the whole of the expenses
connected with the sports in which they represent
their university or school. They will be rowing and
playing cricket on strictly amateur lines, incurring
the same kind of expenses, and meeting them in
exactly the same way, if Mr. Nowell Smith will forgive
us for saying so, as at Winchester and Sherborne
and New College, and all the other schools and
colleges, and all the amateur rowing and swimming
and cricket and football and lawn tennis and archery
and fencing and athletic clubs of the United Kingdom.
There is no need, however, to labour this point,
except to add that there is every reason to believe
that Mr. J. E. K. Studd, of the Eton and Cambridge
Elevens, and the Select Committee for the Olympic
Games of which he is chairman, are not the sort of
men to be blind to the urgent importance of so
administering any funds with which they may be
entrusted in accordance with the best traditions of
British sport. For the present we wish rather to
turn to an aspect of professional sport which we are
too apt to forget. Men are apt to speak of "the
taint of professionalism " as though professionalism
were one of the deadly sins. Yet if we think for a
moment of the professionals that we know—in golf,
cricket, rackets, tennis, and practically every other
form of sport—we realize at once that they are
deservedly one of the most respected classes in the
community. Vardon and Ray and Braid and Taylor
and the other professional golfers are, as most of us
know from personal experience, all men who play
the game with absolute fairness and honour, even
though they play it for money. It is the same thing
with Hirst and Hobbs and Woolley and Blythe,
and the whole profession of paid county players.
They are good fellows and good sportsmen to a man.
Unless they were, is it likely that they would be
chosen to stand as umpires in first-class cricket ?
But there is no need to insist upon the point. Every-
body knows it. Every amateur numbers not only
among his acquaintances but among his friends
professionals of one sort or another for whose ideals
of sport and sportsmanship he has the highest respect.
When Mr. Frederic Harrison expresses a wish that
county elevens should consist of ten amateurs and one
professional, he forgets that in the good old days of
simple old-fashioned cricket there were probably
just as many professionals in the county teams as
there are to-day. In saying this we must not be
taken to imply that we underrate the importance of
the amateur element in first-class cricket. But it
is as well to face facts as they are, and not to sigh for
an ideal state of things—if it is ideal—which has
never existed. As a matter of fact it never can exist.
The supply of young amateurs with sufficient means
and leisure to play regular county cricket is necessarily
limited, though there are probably quite as
many in the country as is good for it or for
them. From one point of view it is not highly
desirable that a large number of well-educated
young men should spend too many of the best
summers of their lives in playing a game—how-
ever fine a game—for the delectation of the
multitude. With the professionals it is different.
For them cricket is the business of part
of their working life, and though we may
talk of the taint of professionalism, we honour
them for the way in which they conduct that business.
But perhaps what we really mean when we use the
phrase is the taint of veiled professionalism. That,