Though the people had so few outdoor games, the great majority of Americans, except the less well-to-do of the city-dwellers of the Eastern States, have been accustomed to handle gun and rod from their childhood. The gun may at first have been a rusty old muzzle-loader, and the rod a "pole" cut from the bank of the stream with a live grasshopper for bait; and there are few better weapons to teach a boy to be a keen sportsman. The birds that he shot were game—duck or geese, turkeys, quail, grouse, or snipe—and the fish that he caught were mostly game fish—trout and bass. It is true that the American generally shoots foxes; so does the Englishman when he goes to the Colonies where there are no hounds and too many foxes, with game birds which he wishes kept for his own shooting, and domestic chickens which he destines for his own table. On the other hand the American does not mount a miniature cannon in a punt and shoot waterfowl by wholesale when sitting on the water. It is only the gunner for the market, the man who makes his living by it, who does that, and the laws do their best to stop even him. The American sportsman who cannot get his duck fairly on the wing with a 12- or 16-bore prefers not to get them at all. "But," objects the English wildfowl shooter, "suppose the birds are not get-at-able in any other way?" "So much," the American would retort, "the better for the birds. They have earned their lives; get them like a sportsman or let them go."
The time may not be far away—and many Englishmen will be glad when it comes—when to kill waterfowl at rest with a duck gun will no longer be considered a "sport" that a gentleman can engage in in England. Perhaps fox-hunting will become so popular in the United States that foxes will be generally preserved. The sportsmen of each country will then think better of those of the other. Meanwhile it would be pleasanter if each would believe that such little seemingly unsportsmanlike peculiarities that the other may have developed are only the accidents of his environment, and that under the same circumstances there is not a pin to choose between their sportsmanship.
Reference has more than once been made to the quality which looks to English eyes so much like semi-professionalism in American sport. It is a delicate subject, in handling which susceptibilities on one side or the other may easily be hurt.
The intense earnestness and concentration of the American on his one sport—for most Americans are specialists in one only—does not commend itself to English amateurs. The exclusiveness, which seems to be suspicious of foul play, and the stringent training system of certain American crews at Henley have been out of harmony with all the traditions of the great Regatta and have caused much ill feeling, some of which has occasionally come to the surface. Some of the proceedings of American polo teams have not coincided with what is ordinarily considered, in England, the behaviour of gentlemen in matters of amateur sport. On the other hand, Americans universally believe that Lord Dunraven acted in a most unsportsmanlike manner in the unfortunate cup scandal; and in one case they are—or were at the time—convinced that one of their crews was unfairly treated at Henley. Honours therefore on the surface are fairly easy; and, while every Englishman knows that both the American charges quoted are absurd, every American is no less of the opinion that the English grounds of complaint are altogether unreasonable.
We must remember that after all a good many of the best English golfers and lawn-tennis players do nothing else in life but golf or play lawn-tennis. And this tendency to specialise is undoubtedly increasing. Meanwhile it will never be rooted out of the American character and in departments of sport where it, and it alone, will bring pre-eminence, Englishmen will either have to do as Americans do or, sooner or later, consent to be defeated. There is nothing in the practice at which the Englishman can fairly cavil. Americans have still much the fewer sports; and it is the national habit to take up one and concentrate on it with all one's might.[420:1]
A more difficult aspect of the situation has to do with the question of the definition of "gentleman-amateur"; the fact being, of course, that the same definition has not the same significance in the two countries. The radical difficulty lies in the fact that the word "gentleman" in its English sense of a man of gentle birth has no application to America. Let this not be understood as a statement that there are any fewer gentlemen in America or that the word is not used. But its usage is not re-inforced, its limits are not defined, as in England, by any line of cleavage in the social system. A large number of the gentlemen of America are farmers' sons; more than half are the sons of men who commenced life in very humble positions, and nearly all are the sons of men who are engaged in trade or in business, the majority of them being destined to go into trade or business (and to begin at the beginning) themselves. In England, of course, the process of the obliteration of the old line is going on with great rapidity. In America, on the other hand, there is a tendency towards the drawing of a somewhat corresponding line. But the fact remains that at present there exists this fundamental distinction and the consequence is that Englishmen continue to find among American "amateurs" and in teams of American "gentlemen," individuals who would not be accepted into the same categories in England.
But what Englishmen should endeavour to understand is that the man who on the surface seems to belong to a class which in England would be objectionable in the company of gentlemen probably has none of those characteristics which would make him objectionable were he English. He has far more of the characteristics of a gentleman than of the other qualities. The qualities which go to make a "gentleman," even in the English sense, are many and complex; but the assumption is that they are all present in the man who bears the public school and university stamp. The Englishman is accustomed to accept the presence or absence of one or a few of those qualities in an individual as evidence of the presence or absence of them all. In judging other Englishmen, the rule works satisfactorily. But in America, with its different social system, the qualities are not tied up in the same bundles, so that the same inference fails. The same, or a similar, peculiarity of voice or speech or manner or dress or birth does not denote—much less does it connote—the same or similar things in representatives of the two peoples. Particular Englishmen have learned this often enough in individual cases. How often has it not happened that an Englishman, meeting an American first as a stranger, not even being informed that he is an American, has, judging from some one external characteristic, turned from him as being an Undesirable, only to be introduced to him later, or meet him under other conditions, and find in him one of the best fellows that he ever met? The thing is happening every day. Very often, with a little more knowledge or a little clearer understanding, Englishmen would know that their judgment of some American amateur athlete is shockingly unjust. To bar him out would be incomparably more unjust to him than his inclusion is unjust to any antagonist.
This of course does not touch the fact—which is a fact—that in America what answers to the gentleman-amateur in England is drawn from a much larger proportion of the people. This does not however mean, when rightly viewed, what Englishmen generally think it means, that Americans go down into other—and presumably not legitimate—classes for their recruits. It only means that a very much larger proportion of the people belong to one class. There is no point at which an arbitrary line can be drawn. This is in truth only another way of saying what has been said already more than once, that the American people is really more homogeneous than the English, or rather is homogeneous over a larger part of its area, so that the type-American represents a greater proportion of the people of the United States than the type-Briton represents of the people of the British Isles.