FOOTBALL AND THE WAR.
pIIBLIC opinion is seldom wrong when it does not declare itself in a passion, but advances steadily along a particular line, increasing almost unconsciously in strength as it goes. A very strong public opinion of this kind exists about the continued playing of professional football. We believe that if this opinion extends at its present rate it will soon become irresistible. When the one need of the country is for the able-bodied young men to enlist in the new Army, it is no exaggeration to say that the spreading of a huge net which entangles their feet and keeps them away from their obvious duty—the duty required by both honour and ordinary manliness—is a disgrace and a scandal. If the few thousands of paid players refuse to give up their liveli- hood or release their employers from their contracts, so be it. They are certainly a few thousands of the flower of physical strength lost to the service of the greatest cause for which a nation ever fought. Their acquisition or loss, however, is not the main point. The main point is that the con- tinuance of professional football demobilizes, as it were, hundreds of thousands of young men who cannot tear themselves away from a peculiar form of excitement which in the circumstances can only be described as a vice. Those who have not joined in a football crowd in a great industrial town, either at a League match or at a match for the Cup, cannot conceive what an absorbing, devouring mania this spectacular football has become. It hypnotizes the mind and devastates resolution for most purposes. To thousands of men and boys the solar solstice is the Cup day, and the year then falls away in interest and importance until football begins again and allows their excitement once more to mount by weekly stages to its zenith. This excitement is fed by various forms of veiled gambling, and when one form is killed by the law there are other forms to take its place until they in their turn become too flagrant an evil to be tolerated. Professional football is something worse than an excuse for young men who refuse to do their duty. It is actually an incentive to them to continue their lives in the ignoble ordinary way, because the very continuance of the games suggests that everything is going on as usual. In the midst of the clamour of a popular match, when nothing seems more important than that Jones should have dashed his way through the opposing backs, or that Smith should have " saved " by a miraculous feat of agility, or that one rich and powerful club should be whispered to be intriguing to buy that wonderful player Blank from another club, powerful but not quite so rich—in the midst of these things, we say, it is almost impossible for the young man to picture to himself those scenes in the trenches only forty miles from Dover, which ought to beckon him to where all his ideal conceptions of how a great game should be played may be put into practice. The Morning Post of Monday contained a touching account of how Colonel Burn in vain addressed the football crowd last Saturday at Stamford Bridge :— "' As a soldier I ask you. I am not saying "go" ; I say "come ; your country needs you." One man to-day is worth ten in a month's time. I have been at the front since the war began. I leave for the front again to-morrow—for the scone where my elder boy has already died a glorious death for his country.' It was Colonel Burn, Member of Parliament and aide-de-camp to his Majesty the King, who was speaking to the people on the far side of the ground at Stamford Bridge, that side where the crowd was most dense. He had come down to Chelsea to try to impress the foot- ball crowd with its duty to the nation. The listeners were respectful as the story of the grand retreat from Mons was told, as the picture of the Marne Battle was drawn, as the smashing of the Prussian Guard was described. Colonel Burn told in simple, straightforward English the unvarnished tale. He dwelt on the corollaries : Sir John French wanted more men ; the grit and courage of the British soldier were as wonderful as ever; was the splendid Army to go unsuccoured merely for the sake of watching football ? A great shout went up as Colonel Burn was in his closing sentences. The sentences As a soldier, I ask you . . . I say, come . . .' were lost in the shout. The shout was the sign that the Chelsea and Notts professional teams were coming on to the field."
Tracts and leaflets were distributed by women in Belgian sashes and by Boy Scouts, and were soon blowing along the cinder-path. Thirty thousand men and boys are said to have been present. The harvest of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee was one recruit. Consider, again, this passage from an article in the Westminster Gazette .— " At thirty football matches played on Saturday the stated attendance of the public was 247,000. These matches were in the First and Second Leagues, and the first division of the Southern League. Add to the total those who watched the games in the second division of the Southern League, the Cup ties, the South- Eastern League, the Western League, and the remainder of the six hundred League competitions which are recognized by the Football Association, and a figure of attendance will be reached that may be imagined. To put the probabilities modestly, there must have been three-quarters of a million onlookers, and the majority of these would be young men. You cannot stand and watch football for nearly a couple of hours in a keen east wind unless you have the warmth of blood of youth. Cut out of the calculation all the followers of amateur football, and half a million will be an understatement of the multitude of those who cheered players paid to make the amusement of a Saturday afternoon. Well might the mouth of every recruiting sergeant water at the thought of these huge congregations—twenty thousand at a single match—of promising material for the front," We fear that we may have to revise all our opinions as to football being a splendid preparation for soldiering. For what is one to say of a preparation which never ceases to be a preparation—never emerges into the next stage P It is as though a man who had for years practised shooting at a miniature range in order to fit himself for a national emergency should become so madly fascinated by his pursuit that he went on complacently scoring bull's-eyes and still " preparing " himself while the enemy burnt down his house and shot his
family as spies.
What is the defence of the Football Association and the Northern Union, which do the country the monstrous dis- service of diverting attention from the need for recruits ? They say—we state their arguments as fairly as we can—that it is a good thing, so far as is compatible with effective recruiting, to encourage the principle of " business as usual." They say that the management of League matches and so forth is a business. Unhappily we cannot deny it. They say that their contracts with their players cannot be legally broken. They say that they give large sums out of the gate-money to war funds, and that they do, and will still further, encourage every effort to recruit men either among the spectators or among the players. Finally, the Association has said that the
War Office has expressed its approval of the continuance of professional football. And what should be the answer to this defence P Simply
that there is not a single one of the pleas which is really valid. Professional football is not like any other business. No other kind of provided spectacle draws away so many young men. Theatres do not; cinematograph shows do not ; concerts do not. As for the question of contracts, thousands of contracts in other fields of commerce have been ended because there was an earnest and patriotic desire to be released from them. What was possible in those cases is possible in the commerce of football. There is nothing about a football contract, that we ever beard of, which gives it a sacredness above the rest. If there is the will, the way will certainly be found. Again,
the transfer of part of the gate-money to war funds cannot possibly justify the preservation of a vast system for spoiling recruiting. Nothing can justify that, and certainly not this mere pecuniary palliative. As for the value of the oppor- tunities for recruiting on football grounds, the incident which we have quoted from the Morning Post may be taken as a measure. Lastly, we understand that it is not correct to say that the War Office has approved of the maintenance of pro- fessional football during the war. Whatever communication may have been made by the War Office to the Committee of the Football Association has evidently been misunderstood by the Committee.
The Council of the Association are to meet soon. It may be that they will decide to bring their matches to an end. If that should be so, the effect will be great. The most effectual single drag upon recruiting will be removed. If no such decision is taken, we shall return to the subject with the intention of discovering the best means of bringing public opinion to bear on the methods of the Football Association. The Thyestean banquet on the able-bodied youth of the country is a shameful perversion of patriotism and good taste that must not be allowed to continue.
But perhaps, after all, we are too hard upon the spectators at football matches. Suppose they turn on us and say : " What right have you to upbraid us for amusing ourselves P The Government know more about it than you do, and they have made no attempt to stop football. If they really believed the situation to be serious, they would, of course, stop the game. That they have not stopped it is a proof that they do not regard things as serious. Till, then, they give us the word we shall go on as usual." What answer are we to return to this—except that it is one more argument for the Government taking the country into their confidence P
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