On October 22, our wedding anniversary, my wife Trudie and I sailed for Germany. I didn’t believe I could find any good boxing material on my first trip for Rickard, but I decided to study the field thoroughly and make contacts. I saw plenty of ring activity throughout Germany, but nothing that impressed me—not a professional worth discussing with Rickard. Fred Walker, Managing Editor of the New York _Telegram_ asked me to write a series for our special Sunday Section on “Reconstruction in the Fatherland,” and in that series I wrote: “Of one thing I am convinced—Germany is rapidly developing a nation of athletes, with boxing holding the attention of youth more so than any other sport. Germany is a nation to watch. Boxing is gaining a firm hold in the Fatherland.” The following year, after I had returned from a two-week trip to Central America, wife and I again left for Central Europe for another series of articles. Our trip called for a tour of Germany, France and Italy. This time I was confident I could locate at least one prospect and I promised Rickard I would have someone for him, but again I failed. I did, however, make the acquaintance of the best international referee in Europe, Arthur Buelow, and of Prof. Joseph Pilates, a physical culture instructor now the owner of a studio a stone’s throw away from Madison Square Garden. Both were behind the movement to develop boxing talent in Germany and were doing a fine job. Buelow, prior to the war, had taught the sport and had officiated in many international bouts as third man in the ring, and Pilates was an instructor of boxing and physical training in the Berlin Police Department and on the Isle of Wight where he had been a military prisoner during World War I. They steered me on the right path. Pugilism, they said, was sweeping the country like a jitterbug craze, and I found it to be so. Wherever I went, boys were engaged in club competition. Every village had an amateur club where boxing was on the daily program. From among the victors in the various district organizations, came the national champions, and with conditions as they were at the time, being a title holder meant a lot to the champion. Here boxing was being practiced on the largest scale I have ever seen. The leading promoter was Walter Rothenberg who operated in Berlin and in Hamburg. He staged the championship matches and occasionally, as an added attraction, had one or two professional bouts on the program in which several of the contestants were boxers who had been in America prior to the war, among them Jack Stanley, Jack Taylor and Paul Sampson, boxers I had seen in action in New York City and in Hoboken, New Jersey.