of those
who make merry in their room are sure-eyed, well set-up, ruddy,
muscular chaps, about whom the average man may jeer and quote
slanderous doggerel only at his peril. But somehow or other the
average man likes this new type better and does not want to jeer at
him, but goes and buys his work instead.

Faint though distinct, one begins to hear the new note of exuberance
spreading through the arts. On canvas it registers the fact that the
painters are migrating in hordes to live most of the year in the open
country. It vibrates in the sparkling tone of the new type of musical
performer like Willeke, the 'cellist. Like a starter's pistol it
sounds out of the writings of hard-trained men of the hour like John
Masefield and Alfred Noyes. One has only to compare the overflowing
life and sanity of workers like these with the condition of the
ordinary "Out-of-the-way young man" to see what a gulf yawns between
exuberance and exhaustion, between absolute sanity and a state
somewhere on the sunny side of mild insanity. And I believe that as
yet we catch only a faint glimpse of the glories of the physical
renaissance. Wait until this new religion of exuberance is a few
generations older and eugenics has said her say!

Curiously enough, the decadent artists who pride themselves on their
extreme modernity are the ones who now seem to cling with the most
reactionary grip to the old-fashioned, invertebrate type of physique.
The rest are in a fair way to undergo such a change as came to Queed,
the sedentary hero of Mr. Harrison's novel, when he took up boxing. As
sport and the artists come closer together, they should have a good
effect on one another. The artists will doubtless make sport more
formful, rhythmical, and beautiful. Sport, on the other hand, ought
before long to influence the arts by making sportsmen of the artists.

Now good sportsmanship is composed of fairness, team-work, the grace
of a good loser, the grace of a good winner, modesty, and gameness.
The first two of these amount to an equitable passion for a fair field
and no favor, and a willingness to subordinate star-play, or personal
gain, to team-play, or communal gain. Together they imply a feeling
for true democracy. To be converted to the religion of sportsmanship
means to become more socially minded. I think it is more than a
coincidence that at the moment when the artists are turning to sport,
their work is taking on the brotherly tone of democracy. T