Dick continued his questions, making notes from the information he received, and at last said, with a smile: “On the whole, I think you chaps managed to find out a good deal. Still, it’s pretty evident that Springdale didn’t show anything new. She wouldn’t, I suppose, so early in the season. We’ll see what the Springdale paper says Monday about the game.”
“Look here, Dick,” said Chester, “what’s the—the ethics of that sort of thing?”
“What sort of thing, Chester?”
“Why, scouting, as we call it; spying on the other fellow.”
“I don’t know,” replied Dick slowly. “I don’t think I’ve ever considered it. Why do you ask?”
“Because I felt like an awful sneak over there this afternoon,” was the answer. “So did Lanny, only he wouldn’t own up to it.”
“Everyone does it,” observed George Cotner.
“That doesn’t make it right, though,” said Chester doggedly. “I don’t believe it is right, either. If it were I wouldn’t have felt so like a—a fox!”
“I’m sorry,” said Dick. “I wouldn’t have asked you to do it if I’d known you were going to feel that way about it.” He jabbed a pencil thoughtfully into the tablecloth. Then, “Honestly, fellows, I don’t know what to say about it. As George says, everyone does it; colleges and schools everywhere. I suppose that if we look on football as a sort of athletic warfare—to coin a term—we have every right to spy on the enemy in order to learn, as in real warfare, what his condition is and what his plans may be.”