he call of
brotherhood is to-day one of the chief preoccupations of poetry, the
drama, ideal sculpture, and mural decoration. For this rapid change I
should not wonder if the democracy of sportsmanship were in part
responsible.

The third element of sportsmanship is the grace of a good loser.
Artists to-day are better losers than were the "foot-in-the-grave
young men." Among them one now finds less and less childish petulance,
outspoken jealousy of others' success, and apology for their own
failure. Some of this has been shamed out of them by discovering that
the good sportsman never apologizes or explains away his defeat. And
they are importing these manly tactics into the game of art. It has
not taken them long to see how ridiculous an athlete makes himself who
hides behind the excuse of sickness or lack of training. They are
impressed by the way in which the non-apologetic spirit is invading
the less athletic games, even down to such a sedentary affair as
chess. This remarkable rule, for example, was proposed in the recent
chess match between Lasker and Capablanca:

Illness shall not interfere with the playing of any game, on
the ground that it is the business of the players so to
train themselves that their bodies shall be in perfect
condition; and it is their duty, which by this rule is
enforced, to study their health and live accordingly.

The fourth factor of sportsmanship is the grace of a good winner. It
would seem as though the artist were learning not only to keep from
gloating over his vanquished rival, but also to be generous and
minimize his own victory. In Gilbert's day the failure did all the
apologizing. To-day less apologizing is done by the failure and more
by the success. The master in art is learning modesty, and from whom
but the master in sport? There are in the arts to-day fewer
megalomaniacs and persons afflicted with delusions of grandeur than
there were among the "_Je-ne-sais-quoi_ young men." Sport has made
them more normal spiritually, while making them more normal
physically. It has kept them younger. Old age has been attacked and
driven back all along the line. One reason why we no longer have so
many grand old men is that we no longer have so many old men. Instead
we have numbers of octogenarian sportsmen like the late Dr. S. Weir
Mitchell, who have not yet been caught by the arch-reactionary
fossil-collector, Senility. This is a fair omen for the future of
p