But when we turn to the assertion that the practice of sport is, actually, the best _training_ for war, we find it to be contradicted by facts. On this point we cannot do better than quote from a letter addressed to the _Humanitarian_ by Mr. R. B. Cunninghame-Graham: “The rise of Japan and the fighting qualities of the Japanese have shaken sportsmen from their ‘sport-the-image-of-war’ position. It is well known that not only are the majority of Japanese vegetarians, but that such a thing as a sportsman is unknown amongst them. Yet, without wishing to disparage the prowess of European soldiers, how many ‘sportsmen’ would wager much money on the chances of a thousand picked Europeans if opposed to a thousand Japanese soldiers in an open plain with no weapons but swords? “The Boer War, and the miserable figure cut by our officers in comparison with the Boer officers in both shooting and riding, disposed conclusively of the ‘sport-the-preparation-for-war’ argument, so dear to sportsmen. In fact, ‘sport’ as understood in England cannot prepare men for war, even if they ride to hounds three days a week, shoot the other three, and read the _Pink Un_ on Sunday. English sport and war are different in their essence, and one has no analogy to the other. “In the one case men rise from a comfortable bed, bathe, and breakfast, and even if they are exposed to weather during the day, return at night to a well-cooked dinner and comfortable bed. The horses they ride are valuable, highly-trained animals, who are expected to put out their full strength for at most two or three hours, and are perhaps not required again for two or three days, or even expected to be required. The shooting is done under the same conditions, and though requiring skill (as does the riding in fox-hunting), is not of a nature to be useful in war. “In neither case does the ‘diversion’ conduce to the self-denying or abstemious habits so essential in war. Of course, I do not mean that sportsmen are of necessity of intemperate habits, but in war the conditions are different from those of sport. In the latter case the soldier rises, perhaps from a night of rain round a camp-fire, gets, without breakfast, on his half-starving horse, and jogs along all day at a footspace, to sleep, supposing there is no fighting and he has not been killed, once more by a camp-fire, perhaps again in rain, or in a driving wind. “Every condition under which the sportsman plays is different from those under which the soldier works. As in the Roman times regiments of gladiators proved the most useless at the front, so I believe a regiment all composed of sportsmen would make a miserable show before a thousand quite unsporting Japanese.”