You have to accept this convention of sportsmanlike warfare, like others, before you can make it work. And the Love of Fair Play of which we have heard so much in the past is quite artificial too. It is not really inherent in human nature. Like other moralities it has to be taught, and it is very seldom taught with success. Let us say, not unreasonably, that you begin to take an interest in boxing as a boy. You hear about various fights--at least you do nowadays, and you want to imitate the fighters, just as in the same way but at a different moment you want to be an engine-driver, or an airman, or the Principal Boy in _Robinson Crusoe_, when your young attention is drawn to such occupations. When I was a small boy (if, in order to illustrate a point, a short excursion into autobiography may be forgiven me), the last flicker of the Prize-Ring had, so to put it, just expired, and glove-fighting was not then perhaps a pretty business. A curiosity which, not being skilled in the science and practice of psycho-analysis, I can only ascribe to spontaneous generation, and the fact that Tom Sayers once invested my mother, then a little girl, with his champion’s belt at a village fair--this curiosity impelled me to desire, from a railway bookstall, the purchase on my behalf of a shilling book called _The Art of Self-Defence_, by one Ned Donelly. It was, I believe, the very first work of its peculiar and spurious kind--that is, a handbook with or without merit (this one had several, notably that of brevity), written by a sporting reporter and inscribed by the pugilist. I had some difficulty in getting that gift, but when I did I devoured the book from gray paper cover to cover. I knew it almost all by heart once. I remember now that Ned Donelly said he had fought under the auspices of Nat Langham, and I wondered what auspices meant, and I wonder now if Ned Donelly knew. Later, in the mid-nineties, _Rodney Stone_ appeared in the pages of “The Strand Magazine,” and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whilst admitting that rascality was known in connection with the Prize-Ring, yet showed how the Great Tradition of the British Love of Fair Play in the face of the most reprehensible practices maintained itself. All literature which touched the subject, all conversation with elder persons led me to believe that this desire of Fair Play was inseparable from the British composition (though seldom found outside these islands), and that if one had a quarrel at school an adjournment was immediately made to some secret trysting-place, where boys formed a ring, a timekeeper and referee were appointed, and you and your opponent nobly contended until one--the one who was in the wrong, of course--gave in.