THE BOAT-RACE AND COMMON - SENSE.
"TIIST look at that immense crowd ! What draws those effi people so mightily to this boat-race ? What ? They have nothing to win by it: it is, mostly, not their class' that fights for the laurels. Yet their interest is supreme." In some reflections on the Boat-Race of last Saturday, published in the Daily Express, Dr. Emil Reich tells us that when he was following the race in a steam launch those words were whispered to him by an old Cambridge "blue." We have often been told that Oxford and Cambridge and the public schools produce men of a fixed type—a good type on the whole, but limited, and, above all, inflexible—that would rather die than sin against its conventions. This seems to have been too sweep- ing a generalisation. For it appears now, on the word of Dr. Reich, that there is at least one old "blue" who was capable of whispering the singular words we have quoted about a contest which is generally spoken of in the most circum- scribed, because specialised, language of all. Our curiosity is perhaps too great, but we should like to meet this exceptional "blue." We are inclined to act like the House of Commons and shout "Name !" Who can he be who talks in his suppressed excitement of "drawing mightily," who interjects that rhetorical question " What ? " (though the word would have served all the rest of the tribe of "blues" only if they had failed to bear what Dr. Reich had said), and who beats the record by speaking for the first time in history of the Boat-Race as "fighting for the laurels " ? The unusual language nevertheless conceals a fact. The Boat-Race paradoxically causes the most notable demonstrations among those who are not intimately concerned in it. Oxford and Cambridge men do not wear pieces of ribbon in their button-holes to proclaim their sympathies. They merely accept the uproarious partisanship of beribboned London as a tribute to the importance of the contest which it is their business to provide. As for the four miles of bawling humanity between Putney and Mortlake on the race-day, they are a token of the absence of class-jealonsy. These people were not at Oxford or Cambridge, and their sons are not there either, but they feel that the Boat-Race concerns them as much as anybody. The Boat-Race is a democratic institution. Oxford and Cambridge have no associations with the inexpert enthusiasm which only amuses them, yet in contesting the question of superiority between themselves they do happen to bring to London every year an example of how an ideal sporting event should be carried out, cleanly, squarely, without material prizes, without the oppressive influences of gate-money, and almost without the complement of these things, gambling.
Yet, with the exception of the old Cambridge "blue" who whispered to Dr. Reich, Oxford and Cambridge do not talk of these things directly. They are not conscious that, being "to the rest of the Universities, roughly speaking, what the House of Lords is to the House of Commons," they offer to London, to "the greatest community of commoners," on the principle of noblesse oblige, this annual display of oarsman- ship. If the lesson were not unconscious, it would be a terribly superior business, and no doubt the enraged multitude for whose edification the crews so deliberately performed would tear the ribbons from their coats. As it is, the Boat-Race happily remains a common-sense
affair. It is edifying because it is not arranged for edification. It is the normal complement of an established intellectual life. Physical and mental cultivation in every healthy body must be maintained in perfect equipoise ; but there is always the danger that the equipoise will be upset by too hard a tugging this way or that. Honestly, we should say the class of " blues " have a much higher percentage than any other class of men of those who have done their best to upset the equilibrium in their own favour. Dr. Reich's view that the crews come to London to assure an attentive and anxious public that the national "House of Lords" of the intellect can still produce men bale in body is not well informed. If this were the object of Oxford and Cambridge, we should counsel them to send a boat-load or two of poor scholars, in whose case anxiety for their physical well-being might be more justifiable. Dr. Reich inverts the whole matter, transposes cause and effect, when he says that he has always held that he who could explain why the ancient Greeks bestowed such rapturous enthusiasm upon their Olympian games would thereby alone shed a flood of light on Hellenic history. The games were not an original inspiration which were the fount of influence in all the other relations of Greek life. They were the natural expression of a people who cultivated bodily vigour for all purposes. They were strictly accidental. The Boat-Race also is accidental.
It is sometimes said that the Boat-Race is declining in popularity. This is rather, as a writer in the Evening Standard recently remarked, like saying that eating and drinking and falling in love and being born are declining in popularity. So long as competition is the means of progress, so long is the Boat-Race, democratic in effect but non-Socialistic in essence, bound to flourish, We have heard of a housemaid who mani- fested a furious resistance to the attempt of her friends to lure her from her allegiance to Cambridge. She had always "been Cambridge," she said, and would remain Cambridge. That stands for the degree of partisanship aroused by the Race in the non-intimates of the Universities. It says all without resort to the rhapsodies of that mid-Victorian singer of athletic events who, as far as we remember, once wrote of a young woman : "The colours of Cambridge gleam bright from her eyes." What a distinguished contributor to Punch once said of his paper may be repeated of the Boat-Race. When some one remarked that Punch was "not so good as it used to be," he answered "It never was." A great oneness is commonly supposed to be on the decline. Close observers do, however, think that a few years ago the Boat-Race suffered in import- ance. It is hard to explain why. Perhaps a long succession of victories by Oxford lessened the sense of keenness in the competition. Or perhaps it was discovered that in lean years the perfect model of oarsmanship (not that any oarsman ever is, was, or will be perfect) is not to be found in a University crew. In such years really first-rate rowing may be seen only in a Leander crew at Henley. But latterly that reason would not have held good, as the Cambridge crews have been nearly as strong as all the resources of England could make them. If the public learned to be disdainful, a little more know- ledge soon cured them. Much dealing in the technical terms of rowing has made them acquainted with the main principles of the art. They would not read with patience now a certain early Victorian story in which all the members of a crew "rowed fast and furiously, but none so fast as Stroke," who, of course, was the hero. Their knowledge of training has also kept pace with the enlightenment of those who go through it. They do not expect the crews to eat raw beef and suck raw eggs for drink. Modern training is only a higher power of the normal. The idiotic belief that the way to improve bodily power was to stop all the forms of food to which the body was accustomed, and suddenly introduce a wholly artificial diet, is as dead as it deserves to be. It is as dead as the pugilists' practice of eating gunpowder to give them explosive energy. Common-sense has triumphed.
Rowing has not yet become a labour through exaggeration of its importance. Happily, its best practitioners enjoy it as a pastime, and wish to keep it as such. This nice sense of proportion, which has been preserved because oarsmen do not admit that kind of semi-professionalism which in so many sports masquerades as amateurism, is sometimes menaced at Henley Regatta. Americans train and practise with far more method than ourselves. Hitherto we have always beaten them because (we speak as Englishmen) our stroke is better than theirs. But if they adopt our stroke, and bring to the practice of it all their thoroughness of bodily culture, who can doubt what the result will be sooner or later? The interest- ing question will then arise : Is it worth while ? Is it worth while to turn a sport into a labour P Rowing is already allowed its full grant of time. The old-fashioned Heads of Houses at Oxford and Cambridge are accustomed to say that their Colleges go up and down in esteem according to their position on the river. Is it not related of a certain Tutor that he was shocked to discover that by mistake he had "ploughed" in the entrance examination an accomplished wet-bob, on whom he was counting to revive the rowing fortunes of the College, and that thereupon, saving both the future of the College and its intellectual repute at one stroke, he telegraphed to the rejected wet-bob :—" Reconsidering your case. Can you telegraph the perfect of rtm-ro P " According to thatplan, the lusty rowing-men play the drunken helot for the good of their Colleges and University. To conceive them as Peers of the intellect rebutting the national anxiety for their health by an excursion into acts of physical prowess is startling enough to make the "Cambridge" housemaid transfer her attachment to Oxford.
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