TRAINING AND ORGANIZATION 247 



as well see what they were doing. Bit by bit I edged my 

 way into the crowd and presently forgot I was ill, and 

 began to take an interest in things. I asked the man 

 next to me what race was to be run and, obviously showing 

 great surprise at my ignorance, he answered that it was 

 the Oaks. And he told me that the name of the favourite 

 was Geheimniss. Presently the race was started, and 

 soon the crowd rose up with a roar as the horses came 

 round Tattenham Corner into the straight. Now do not 

 forget that I had not a penny on the result, and had never 

 seen a race before, and did not know the name of a single 

 mare in it until I was told. Yet when they came up the 

 straight, and the crowd began to shout, and the whole 

 of the people in the Grand Stand opposite rose to their 

 feet, to my utter amazement I found myself shouting at 

 the top of my voice, " Geheimniss wins, Geheimniss wins ! " 

 Somebody near me, on the other hand, having probably 

 put money on another animal, shouted, " So-and-so wins, 

 So-and-so wins ! " whereupon I turned upon him furiously 

 and said, " No, damn you, Geheimniss wins ! " And she 

 did win. Then the crowd broke up and I drifted out of 

 it and went off by myself wondering what had happened 

 to me. I know now that I had been caught by the massed 

 enthusiasm of the crowd and made one of a very peculiar 

 racing organism — an organism, by the way, not of a high 

 type. 



Here I think I might quote a short passage out of 

 something I wrote many years ago : 



" A crowd is not human, as we understand human 

 individuality. It's not bestial, not reptilian. But it's 

 all three — human, bestial, and reptilian .... A crowd 

 is a flood of life, a giant mass of deadly forces ; it has no 

 very clear foresight ; it takes the present only ; it has no 



