WAR-TIME SPORT
Sta,--I sign myself as under and not by my name, because I believe that mine, with my family's, is an ordinary case, probably similar to that of most of those who took part as performers or spectators in what your correspondent Mr. Inwood calls " the scandal of the Derby and cricket's bad example of a representative match at Lord's." I am seventy years old. I have four sons and an adopted nephew, all serving—major, flight-lieutenant, captain, second lieutenant, lieutenant in the Navy. Of my daughters, one is married to a colonel commanding his battalion ; the other keeps house for me, is her own housemaid, teacher in the Sunday school, runs a pack of wolf-cubs, is ex-president of the village Women's Institute, and looks after five evacuated schoolboys in the house. A fortnight ago my nephew in the Navy, after helping sink the ' Bismarck,' came home on leave, and for a single afternoon was joined by his brother, a police sergeant in hospital recovering from burns after being rescued unconscious from a bombed house in London. In a local paper we saw that four miles away there was a school cricket-match against a county colts' side, and we went to watch for an hour or two. I never enjoyed a game more ; I had not heard the sound of a cricket- ball for two years. I should guess that most of those who went to watch the match at Lord's or the Derby at Newmarket were on leave, or away from their work, in some such way as this ; and it is surely a good thing that they were able to go. Does Mr. Inwood realise what it means for commanding officers to try to keep their men fit and keen for months, for years together, in such times as we live in? A day off now and then is in the best sense of the word
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