Nearly every footballer knows that what I say is true, and still the thing grows. It is not too much to say that, at the moment, drink stands before the progress of popular sport like an armed assassin in a narrow path. I shall give other instances in a moment, but at this point it is proper to explain that one is no fanatic. Sport calls aloud for temperance to-day, but sport is not concerned with teetotalism. Every active sportsman must cultivate each sense to its highest power, that is a condition of success in sport. But there is a sixth sense, not sufficiently recognized by writers attacking an evil no less than by sportsmen who concur in it. It is the sense of proportion. Nothing is more necessary than “proportion” in the consideration of such a question as this, a subject of supreme importance in modern sporting life; yet to-day the sense of proportion has been lost by sportsmen and adherents of sport alike. Long ago Plato pointed out that we shall never have perfect men until we have perfect circumstances, and it is the people who condemn a good thing because of its occasional misuse who destroy their own case. Alcohol is a good thing, sport is a good thing, together they are harmless even; but moderation has been overstepped and we are in the middle of a definite and serious crisis. A _Blue-book_ of statistics of crime has just been issued. From it I find that drunkenness is greatest in the great football centres of the North and of Wales. The thirstiest parts of the country are those in which football is the most eagerly played and watched, in which innumerable local sporting papers are published, where the man in the street is a football expert. This is at least significant, though so patent and obvious is the evil that it almost seems a waste of time to pile proof on proof. Nevertheless, before I turn to drink in connection with other varieties of sport, it will be as well to give all my evidence. A well-known North-country baronet, a famous sportsman in his day, an ex-member of one of His Majesty’s ministries and at this moment an enthusiastic volunteer, told me, a short time ago, that in his district the abuse of drink was ruining local sport. “Decent people no longer care to attend football matches,” he said; “the element of drink and ruffianism is becoming too much in evidence. A new class of spectators has been created, men who care little or nothing for the sport itself, but who use a match as a mere opportunity and an excuse for drinking.”