WHITHER ARE WE DRIFTING? 



of youth when I played baseball for myself I 

 might some day renew my interest in baseball as a 

 sport but not on any hired man basis. 



Strange to say, this was precisely the same con- 

 clusion arrived upon by my sporting editor afore- 

 said, and he reached this conclusion not by reason of 

 any definite ambition to have a monument builded 

 over himself as craving the recollection of his fellow 

 man. No, he simply said what he had to say because 

 he felt it and meant it. In the light of a calm and 

 dispassionate reason he seemed if we may employ 

 a much mixed metaphor to be standing in the 

 way of his bread and butter. 



The writer above mentioned stated as his calm 

 opinion that the man who pursues athletics is not 

 and never was a fighting patriot. He said that in 

 the Spanish War not a ballplayer went to the front, 

 nor any professional athlete in any other walk of 

 life. With one exception, not a boxer, not a pro- 

 fessional man of any sort ever went to that war. 

 Again, he pointed out that in these days when Eng- 

 land needs men in her army more than she ever did 

 in all her life, she is not getting many enlistments 

 from the ranks of the professional athletes or from 

 those who pay to see professional athletes perform. 

 At one football game there were one hundred and 

 fifty thousand spectators; they pay a tremendous 



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