A BISHOP'S CHALLENGE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 12018, 8 March 1920, Page 7

A BISHOP'S CHALLENGE.

EPISCOPAL BOXING BOUT. An episcopal sweepstakes, weight or age no bar, the only qualification being that the participants must be bishops, was the novel proposition which set London aflutter a few weeks ago. The announcement, which caused intense perturbation among the staid members of the Church came in the form of a challenge from Bishop McLaglen, of Cleremont, South Africa, in a London sporting journal, to box any bishop five rounds for a fund for disabled soldiers. This pugnacious member of the episcopacy, evidently fearing he may not get sufficient material among his ecclesiastical brethren, -went even further and declared that in order to aid in bringing about a match he is willing to extend the offer to any editor of any paper of his own age. The Bishop, who is 68 years old, is the father of Captain Victor McLaglen, recently beaten bv Beckett for the Lonsdale heavyweight championship t elt. He apparently was teased from his religions devotions to tho more material affairs by something which the papers had printed about his son and his profession. “Why,” he asks, “is it astonishing that a man who chooses to tight in the ring for money should be the son of a bisnop or a man of considerable educational attainments? I have had eight sons, all of whom served in the war, and I should be ashamed of any who could not use his hands. Neither would I wish to see them willing to undergo the long period of work and training necessary for a contest without paj'ment. I wish my sons to be what they are —gentlemen , but Ido not wish to see them what they are not—fools. “Nej|her, ” adds the Bishop, "is there anything contrary to Christianity in boxing. This is solely the nonsense of clergy’ who have forgotten that they are men living in a world of men and not of Victorian old ladies.”