It seems to me that the best judges of any case are those who by education and training are best qualified to judge. It is significant that in Connecticut the prisoner may now choose to be tried by three professional judges rather than by twelve incompetent men. In a recent famous instance the prisoner did make that choice.

Too often a public trial by jury becomes a public scandal; of greater harm to the community and to the state than the crime of which the prisoner is accused.

Mark Twain said: “We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.”

XLIII
ATHLETICS

The whole world, with the exception of India, China, Siberia and a few other countries, has gone wild over athletics. Although new stadiums and amphitheatres are in process of construction everywhere, it is impossible to accommodate the crowds. Millions of people have apparently the money and the time to devote to these spectacular contests, and many more millions “listen in” on the radio. In England last June Wimbledon was not half large enough to hold the frantic crowd that wished to see the tennis matches; the same is true of France. At a recent wrestling contest in Austria, after all the seats were taken, the gates were broken down by the mob of spectators who wished to enter; about 150,000 people saw a prize fight in Chicago and it is significant of the times that the only vacant seats were the cheapest.

Every newspaper devotes an immense amount of space to sporting news; and all the leading daily journals employ a highly paid staff of experts on sports, who keep the public agog with excitement before every contest and who endeavour to satisfy its curiosity after the battle is over.

Now there are some pessimistic philosophers who look upon all this athletic fever as a sign of degeneration, as evidence of the coming eclipse of civilisation. They point out that during the decay of the Roman Empire there was a universal excitement over sports, and they draw the inference that European and American civilisation is headed toward disaster.

No one can read the future, although innumerable fakers are paid for doing so. But it is at least possible that the ever-growing interest in athletics, instead of being a sign of degeneration, is in reality one more proof of the gradual domination of the world by Anglo-Saxon language, customs and ideas.

Extreme interest in athletics, though it cannot be defended on strictly rational grounds, is not necessarily accompanied by a lack or loss of interest in intellectual matters. If one had to name the place and the time when civilisation reached its climax, one might well name Athens in the fifth century before Christ. If one compares Athenian public interest in the tragedies of Sophocles with New York public interest in musical comedy, the contrast is not flattering to American pride. Yet that intellectual fervour in Athens was accompanied by a tremendous interest in track athletics. Every Greek city was a separate state; their only bond of union was the track meet held every four years and called the Olympic Games, to which the flower of youth from every Greek town contributed; and the winner of each event—a simon-pure amateur, receiving as prize only a laurel wreath—was a hero for at least four years.

From the strictly rational point of view it is impossible to defend or even to explain the universal ardour over athletics, but it is best to regard it as a fact, and then see what its causes are.