340 A Black and White Prise Fight [ I 9 11 



to-morrow very likely would sacrifice the Monarchy, and all for noth- 

 ing. This pleased him. We talked about Asquith, whose intellectual 

 power he greatly admires, though he says his range of interest is too 

 narrow to govern an Empire. For myself I consider that Asquith has 

 always been a wet Home Ruler, if one at all. Asquith is above all 

 things a lawyer, and knows how to talk both ways. 



" 21st Feb. — -With Phil Burne-Jones to his studio. He has done 

 several nice little portraits on a very modest scale, the best being one 

 of his father. It is not great art, but respectable and good. He is a 

 pleasant, good fellow. 



" Neville took me in the evening to a prize fight, where four or five 

 thousand persons had collected to see a battle in gloves between a black 

 man and a white man. It was very interesting, indeed exciting, as it 

 involved a question of race superiority. The white man (Lang) was an 

 English Australian, six feet and an inch high, with an immense width 

 of shoulders, and limbs which looked as if they could smash everything; 

 while the black man (Langford) was short, only five foot six, Neville 

 said, but astonishingly well put together head to heel, lithe and strong. 

 The contrast in build was great, but that of morale was still more re- 

 markable, contradicting all my expectations. Lang was nervous, and 

 though he had never been beaten was manifestly afraid of his enemy, 

 who from the beginning took the offensive with a quiet, persistent at- 

 tack which demoralized the other, and a rapidity of striking power which 

 left him no chance. At the end of the fifth round Lang was smashed 

 flat, so that I thought him killed, and though he got up pluckily his 

 face was a mask of blood, and he staggered like a drunken man. The 

 end of the fight was disappointing. Lang, to save himself more pun- 

 ishment, hit a foul blow. The black man, while pommelling him, 

 happened to slip down on one knee, and Lang struck him while down. 

 This disqualified him and ended the fight. It was a great triumph for 

 the black, and I was pleased to see that the feeling of the spectators 

 was mostly on his side, which was right, for he fought not only fairly, 

 but with a certain generosity, while the other showed poor courage. 

 Neville tells me the blacks as fighters have far better nerve than the 

 whites, and are much more dogged. A fight between two blacks gen- 

 erally goes over forty rounds." [The result of this fight was a sur- 

 prise to me. I had expected to see a gigantic black man subdued by 

 the scientific persistence and higher morale of his smaller white op- 

 ponent, a triumpfi of white mind over black matter, but it turned out 

 absolutely the reverse. It was the black man that wore the white down 

 by superior science and superior courage.] 



" 2$th Feb. — We have got our first number of 'Egypt' into print, 

 every word of it written by myself, except a review of Rothstein's 



