But apart from war in which we now know that “fair play” is ridiculously impossible, a little friendly hurting of each other in a roped ring and cold blood will do no harm to any two men. Not as a preparation for the hardships of warfare, not necessarily as a means of self-defence, but in view of a fine ideal of physical fitness, the strain and pain of violent athletics should be perpetuated. And this, apart from the fun of the thing (which after all matters most) is the excuse and reason for amateur boxing. So let boxing be regarded as a sport, and let us leave it at that. * * * * * Old prejudices live with extraordinary vigour: and boxing--the very fact of it--the peaceful and positively harmless encounter of two men with well-padded gloves stirs the deepest rancour still. We are not surprised at this rancour in people who are not English, French, or American: most of us have to take their point of view for granted, because we find it so difficult to capture. We think that bull-fights are barbarous, and a friend of mine who organised an amateur boxing competition in Monte Video and tried to hire the bull-ring for the purpose was prohibited by the Uruguayan authorities because boxing was--barbarous. You come up against a brick wall sometimes, and you can’t see through it, so it’s not the slightest good trying to explain the plants which grow on the other side. But in England, and in America too, the prejudices of the “righteous overmuch,” in fact, the prejudices of the Puritan tradition against the Prize-Ring have lived on to regard modern boxing in a similar light. My personal prejudice against overmuch righteousness and the Puritan tradition make the gist of my researches into the history of the Prize-Ring and of professional boxing a very nasty pill to swallow, very painful to digest. I don’t know that I ever hoped to disprove calumnies, for I had always supposed that there was no reason, but a mere love of softness and Pleasant-Sunday-Afternoon respectability behind these objections to boxing. But, as a matter of fact, I have found, to my disgust, that there is much to be said for the “respectable” view--not, of course, on Puritan grounds, but both on humane grounds and in the cause of good sportsmanship. I believe that sport to-day (I don’t say “amateur sport” because I am unable to recognise as sport any pastime that is not, in its true sense, “amateur”) is better and finer and more chivalrous than it has ever been. It is, as a rule, fair--quixotically fair very often, and the more quixotic it is the better. Where a good sportsman could win a fight within the rules, but risks the chance of losing because, on a particular occasion, he is not satisfied that the letter of the rules is adequate, he is behaving quixotically, and as no one suffers but himself, his quixoticism doesn’t matter. A game is only a game.