Cook is a man without any particular record in this country, though he was Heavy-weight Champion of Australia. By beating Carpentier he would have become Champion of Europe, and would, of course, have bounded into considerable fame. Wise after the event, large numbers of a critical public have observed that the result was for ever certain. But that is unfair to Cook, who showed himself to be a boxer by no means despicable, and who most emphatically had the better of one round out of the four. He was a stone heavier than his man, though this considerable difference was not plainly observable when they stripped. Cook was just a shade “beefy,” but he was strong and well. He looked across the ring with astonishment at the form of his antagonist: for Carpentier is--a Greek bronze, dark-skinned, beautifully proportioned, covered with easy, flowing muscle, a sight to stir the hearts of older athletes with vain regret. The huge hall was full. Large numbers of women were present, both English and French, and these called to mind the amusing discussions in and out of newspapers, before the war, as to the propriety of admitting female spectators to “Gladiatorial displays.” Indeed in one Correspondence Column under the title, “Should Ladies Watch Boxing Contests?” an irascible old sportsman declared that the question did not arise, as no lady would do such a thing. Without entering at length into a question which is not widely interesting, I would ask what hope there was for a gentility which depends upon obedience to a perfectly trivial convention, involving no question of right or wrong, manners, or even what we usually mean by “decorum”? In those days of 1914, before war broke out, and when the “boxing boom” was at its height, a woman whom it is unnecessary to call a “lady,” old enough also to have recognised for what they were and to despise many transient correctitudes of fashion, observed: “If my daughter _likes_ to go and see two nasty men with hairy chests knocking each other about, why shouldn’t she?” And, really, that is all there is to be said on the subject. To return to what the ladies watched, rather than exploring the “quite niceness” of their watching it--a very desperate encounter was not expected: but, provided that he doesn’t knock his man out in the first fifty or sixty seconds, Carpentier is always worth seeing.