The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1911. PRIZE FIGHTING.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 66, 1 November 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1911. PRIZE FIGHTING.

There is evidently a change of feeling in England with regard, to the proposed "great light" between Johnson and Wells, and many leading Home journals speak strongly about it. The "Manchester Guardian" devotes a scathing column to exposing the hollo'tvness of the so-called sport of prize-lighting, while for all sorts of reasons efforts were made to get the Home Office to stop the contest, and apparently with success, judging by our recent cables. After detailing why certain people opposed the light, the "Guardian" goes on to say:—-The whole scheme seems to breathe a rich aroma of mingled humbug and sentiaientalism. There is the prime humbug of the trtificial distinction between prize-fights and glove-rights. This is manly for the consumption of good souls who have never seen the gloves with which a glove-fight for a big prize is fought, and who perhaps think that a glove is a glove and that settles the matter. There is the kindred humbug about an elevating display of gallant sportsmanship and noble selfrestraint, and so on, and this, no doubt, is meant for the consumption of credulous optimists who did not read a verbatim report of the jeers with which Johnson, the politic negro, pursued the.beaten Jeffries throughout a great part of the light at San Reno. There is the humbug about "finest living specimens of humanity,' 1 as if myone who knows a fair number of 'irst-rate amateur athletes could not point to men equal or superior in the combination of muscular strength and ■ grace to either the white paragon or the black. And then there is the double-dyed or two-deep humbug of the pretence that there is anything virile or particularly British in sitting in an -expensive stall and seeing two speciously gloved persons punch each other's heads with a single-minded desire for the larger share of the gatemoney. Boxing is a capital exercise, very good for all sorts of muscles in mt-of-thc-way as well as obvious places, and also i>;ood for the temper. A great deal of mawkish nonsense is talked about it as if it were a school )f all the virtues, but in sober truth it is a hue exercise and a precious indoor outlet for the unrest of the aealthy youthful body. But no senamentalism could be much more nauseous than that of the un-fightng opi•uro of glove-lights. Whenever throughout the civilised, or the enriched though uncivilised, white world you find the man of long purse, flabby muscle, and mean heart, there you find the gushing patron of the ring. To patronise it seems to give him, even more than the buying of highly priced steeplechaser!? and the retaining of fashionable jockeys, the sensation ol being, by deputy, more of a man than ho is. To people like these, who dare only be virile by proxy, a sporting interest in prize-lights offers one ol the last and choicest delusions that money can buy them, and the fruition of this sneak's paradise of vicarious courage is perhaps as perfect a refinement of moral poorness as sentimental ism, with all its range of subtle maladies, can show.