This is obviously in the realm of sport so much to America's advantage. It is not a condition against which the Englishman has any right to protest, any more than he has to move amendments to the Constitution of the United States. When better comprehended, Englishmen will accept it without either resentment or regret. The United States has a larger population than Great Britain: so much the better for the United States. Also a larger proportion of that population must be admitted into the category of gentleman-amateur in sport; so much the more the better for them.
But, curiously enough, this condition has its inherent drawback, which not impossibly more than compensates for its advantages. The fact that young Americans grow up so much of a class involves the essential fact that the enormous majority of them are educated at the Public Schools, that is at the Board Schools or Government Schools or whatever they would be called if their precise counterpart existed in England. The United States has not (the fact has been touched on before) any group of institutions comparable to the great schools of England. A few excellent schools there are which bear some resemblance to the English models, but they are not numerous enough to go any way towards leavening the nation. It is to the Public Schools that, in the mass, the English gentleman-amateur owes his training, not only in sports but in many other things besides: especially in those things which stamp on him the mark by which he is recognised as belonging to his right class through life. The American, as has been said, is not so stamped; but in missing that stamp—or in failing to receive it—he necessarily missed also all that discipline and training in games which the Public School gave to the Englishman. The very same cause as gives America an advantage in the numbers from which she can draw her amateur athletes, also forbids that these recruits should have had the same advantages of early training as fall to the Englishman.
The thing is about as broad as it is long. It is not difficult to imagine that the great schools might never have come into existence in England, so that a larger proportion of the population than is now the case would be educated at some intermediate institutions, at the Grammar Schools let us say, when the English gentleman-amateur athletes—the polo, golf, and tennis teams and the crews that row at Henley—would be drawn from a larger circle of the population, and the individuals would not bear as close a superficial resemblance, one to the other, as they do to-day. They would in fact be more like the members of American athletic teams as Englishmen know them. The question is whether England would gain or lose in athletic efficiency. When Englishmen find something to cavil at in an individual American amateur or in an American amateur team or crew, would it not be better to stop and consider whether the disadvantages which compel America to be represented by such an individual or team or crew, do not outweigh the advantages which enable her to use him or them? If the United States were to develop the same educational machinery as exists in England, which would stamp practically all their gentlemen-amateurs with the same hall-mark, as they are so stamped in England, and would at the same time give them the English public-school boy's training in games, would not England, as a mere matter of athletic rivalry, be worse off instead of better?
For the purpose of pointing the moral of the essential likeness of the American and English characters, as contrasted with those of other peoples, reference has already been made to Professor Münsterberg and his book. It is an excellent book; but what English writer would think it necessary to inform English readers that "the American student recreates himself on the athletic field rather than in the ale-house"? We know something of the life of a German student; but it is only when a German himself says a thing like that that he illuminates in a flash the abyss which yawns between the moral qualities of the youth of his country and the young American or young Englishman.
Again the same author speaks on the subject of the Anglo-Saxon love of fair play (the sporting instinct, I have called it) as follows:
"The demand for 'fair play' dominates the whole American people, and shapes public opinion in all matters whether large or small. And with this finally goes the belief in the self-respect and integrity of one's neighbour. The American cannot understand how Europeans" (Continental Europeans, if you please, Mr. Münsterberg!) "so often reinforce their statements with explicit mention of their honour which is at stake, as if the hearer was likely to feel a doubt of it; and even American children are often apt to wonder at young people abroad who quarrel at play and at once suspect one another of some unfairness. The American system does not wait for years of discretion to come before exerting its influence; it makes itself felt in the nursery, where already the word of one child is never doubted by his playmates."
There is an excellent American slang word, which is "poppycock." The Century Dictionary speaks disrespectfully of it as a "United States vulgarism," but personally I consider it a first-class word. The Century Dictionary defines it as meaning, "Trivial talk; nonsense; stuff and rubbish," which is about as near as a dictionary can get to the elusive meaning of any slang word. English readers will understand the exact shade of meaning of the word when I say that the paragraph above quoted is most excellent and precise poppycock. Every American who read that paragraph when the book was published must have chuckled inwardly, just as every Englishman would chuckle. But the point which I wish to emphasise is that it is not at all poppycock from the author's point of view. I doubt not that his countrymen have been most edified by that excellent dictum, and the trouble is that one could never make a typical German understand wherein it is wrong. No, Mr. Münsterberg, it is not that the sentence is untrue—far be it from me to suggest such a thing. It is merely absurd; and you, sir, will never, never, never comprehend why it is so.
It is in the presence of such a remark, seriously made by so excellently capable a foreigner, that the Englishman and American ought to be able to shake hands and realise how much of a kin they are and how far removed from some other peoples.