on expressed above.

[12] Sir George Campbell, in "Black and White in America."

VII

Sports and Amusements

In face of the immense sums of money spent on all kinds of sport, the
size and wealth of the athletic associations, the swollen salaries of
baseball players, the prominence afforded to sporting events in the
newspapers, the number of "world's records" made in the United States,
and the tremendous excitement over inter-university football matches
and international yacht-races, it may seem wanton to assert that the
love of sport is not by any means so genuine or so universal in the
United States as in Great Britain; and yet I am not at all sure that
such a statement would not be absolutely true. By true "love of sport"
I understand the enjoyment that arises from either practising or
seeing others practise some form of skill-demanding amusement for its
own sake, without question of pecuniary profit; and the true sport
lover is not satisfied unless the best man wins, whether he be friend
or foe. Sport ceases to be sport as soon as it is carried on as if it
were war, where "all" is proverbially "fair." The excitement of
gambling does not seem to me to be fairly covered by the phrase "love
of sport," and no more does the mere desire to see one's university,
state, or nation triumph over someone else's university, state, or
nation. There are thousands of people who rejoice over or bewail the
result of the Derby without thereby proving their possession of any
right to the title of sportsman; there is no difference of quality
between the speculator in grain and the speculator in horseflesh and
jockeys' nerves. So, too, there are many thousands who yell for Yale
in a football match who have no real sporting instinct whatever.
Sport, to be sport, must jealously shun all attempts to make it a
business; the more there is of the spirit of professionalism in any
game or athletic exercise the less it deserves to be called a sport. A
sport in the true sense of the word must be practised for fun or
glory, not for dollars and cents; and the desire to win must be very
strictly subordinated to the sense of honour and fair play. The
book-making spirit has undoubtedly entered far too largely into many
of the most characteristic of British sports, and I have no desire to
palliate or excuse our national shortcomings in this or other
respects. But the hard commercial spirit to which I have alluded seems
to me to pervade Ameri