CAUSE OF DETERIORATION 77 



causes of deterioration are not merely local, but 

 general. It is much the same in the States ; where 

 you find similar results everywhere following the 

 particular course of action, you may be tolerably 

 certain as to what is the cause. 



It is significant that Blackwood's article of 

 January, 1904 — 'A Nation at Play: The Peril of 

 Games ' — not only denounces the mad craze for 

 sport, but concludes that never was England more 

 formidable in the eyes of Europe than when she 

 was Puritan, and that it was an ascetic Rome whose 

 legions bore down all opposition. Macmillan for 

 February has an article on the football fever on the 

 same lines. The Puritanism to which Blackwood 

 alludes was not the sentimental Puritanism of the 

 modern Nonconformist Conscience, but the hard- 

 headed fighting Puritanism of Captain Fight-the- 

 Good- Fight and Major Hew-them-in-Pieces-before- 

 the-Lord. If there were more of that kidney now, 

 there would be less sprinting and better horses. 



Both those articles in those great publications 

 greatly discount the pretence that sport makes 

 England, and the saying, erroneously attributed to 

 the Duke of Wellington, that Waterloo was won 

 at Eton. 



When English workers will neglect work for 

 sport, as Blackwood shows — seventy men having 

 improperly left work to see football played, at a loss 

 of 5s. each, with 3s. each costs — things must be 

 rather unsatisfactory. Is there not self-denial 



