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Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 16174, 27 December 1924, Page 19 (Supplement)

Nobody has written a real study of the English spirit in sport; simply because nobody has written a real study of the English spirit of romance and poetry. The truth is that sport is an escape into a sort of fairyland of happy unreality; a marvellous country where wounds are healed by magic, or where souls and bodies are protected by enchanted shields. It is a fairyland of hitting people without hurting them, and above all without hating them. Other nations have got quite as much activity and quite as much excitement out of other things, such as duels or civic riots or tribal feuds. But there is no such soil for geniality and generosity as the English playground, and in that sense no such school of comradeship as England.—G. K. Chesterton in the "Illustrated Review."