Gentlemen and Players

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 35, 11 February 1933, Page 16

Gentlemen and Players

'.'-That r osy complexion you notjee in the English is due not so much to blooming health as to frost-bite. Among the Americans, on the other hand, it is due.-to careful cultivation, with the aid of the nearest drug store.1 And herer in lies the distinction between the English and the Americans. The former we are asked to regard as amateurs,'the tetter as professionals. See, for instance, the Englishman's home.' It is- draughty, the fireplace smokes, and there is no'hot water for the tub.or shaving mug. The American, on the other hand, insists on all the. comforts. ■ When it comes to the cup .that cheergj t!ie Englishman drains his slowly because he likes his:liquor; whereas the_ American gulps his down because he is in a hurry for the effect. In a sentence, writes John LangdonDavies in "Harper's Magazine," the difference between the English and American cultures is that the Englishman Worships the cult of amateurismhe : wants to like doing things; while thd American worships the cult of professionalism—he wants to get things done. : &

"And' whenever England has failed in modern life," says Mr. LangdonDavies, an Englishman himself, but long familiar with America and American, customs, "it can be shown to be because of amateurism in the wrong place, while in the case of America it can be shown to be because of professionalism ib the wrong place." Take, for instance, the Englishman's attitude . toward sport, especially toward cricket. You must know first that the amateur is always regarded as socially, even morally superior to the professional. To proceed: "Cricket is played by mixed teams of amateurs and professionals, unlike football, where the two types seldom meet on the same side or even in the same competitions. You might think that the little fact that one player makes sufficient money .elsewhere in another business so that he does not have to demand payment for his share in .the game, while another gives all his time to the game and must, therefore,' get his. subsistence from it, should make no difference if both are admitted to the same team.

'"But you would be wrong. It makes Te'ry nearly all the difference.

"To 'begin with, if an amateur ana a- professional chance to begin" the inBings together they will start their journey to the playing field from different doors of the players' pavilion. The professional must not use the fact that he is playing in the same team ■with the amateur to impose himself on his company when off the field of play; he nrast occupy separate quarters like • coloured man on a Southern street-

virWT&n next day The Times' or ♦Mornirig Post' gives an account of the game with the full score, the distinction Is rubbed well in. If you are an amateur your name win appear as Mr. w.-Smith, Trot if a professional you saH'ber Smith (W;), The man who is

so good at the game that lie can make money by it is obviously mot entitled to a prefix, while the bank clerk who plays 'for the love of the game' is singled. out by the mark which stands, in this particular, for a gentleman. At the end of the season a team captained by Mr. W. Smith meets another captained by Smith (W.)—his only chance for leadership—and it will be called 'Gentlemen versus Players.'" In all this, Mr. Langdon-Davies says, is a "suggestion that in some way or other that is not good form to be too good at anything, or, at least, that nothing should be taken very 'seriously. It is in keeping with the fact that.cricket, which, after all, involves a considerable amount of running, was until two generations ago, played in top hats and is still played in long trousers, as if to prevent perfection by handcuffing the free movement of the performer. Moreover, the Englishman in America, when he is honest, must confess that the clothing of a football player is quite repulsive to him, savouring as it does of a professional efficiency more suitable for diving as a business or for a battle field."

The American attitude toward sport is different. One reads, says Mr. Langdon-Davies, that in the United States professionalism is frequently the curse in colleges and elsewhere, and he says: .

"The cult of the professional in the wrong place may very well do for American sport what the opposite cult does in England. But the danger to sport in America seems to me not so much that some people may be paid for their services to a team, but that inevitably hypocrisy will find a way round any defence that can be put to safeguard the amateur status.

"Surely the only safety for sport in the modern world is to abolish therein the very idea of amateurism. To retain it is to court the same hypocrisy that comes from having the nations sign agreements not to use the most efficient weapons in war time, but only to kill one another with out-of-date firing pieces and to maim with laughing gas rather than lethal. It is the cult of the amateur that makes sport crooked." »

This cult is observed by Mr. Lang-don-Davies in every particular of the Englishman's life. The evil is that it usually operates in the wrong place, which is also the fault of the American cult of professionalism. Each country has been brought by its particular cult into a precarious position, from which the inhabitants of both long to escape. And the only way to escape is to migrate, the Englishman to Spain, where he can back into the past and its amateurism, and the American to Soviet Bussia, where he will find that nothing matters so long as he can get it done. Then—"when the rebels have gone, England and America will settle down in earnest to their curious pastime of imitating one another's vices and ignoring one another'^ virtues."