COMMENT

Too few of the sport writing fraternity recognize their stewardship in respect to the ethics and morals of amateur sport. This may be due to self-consciousness, or sheer ignorance of the sanctity of their calling. Or it may be that damnable attitude which is marked throughout the whole American journalistic profession; refusal to take oneself, or what one is doing too seriously. Which is the reason I presume, why anyone attempting the duties of a physician, a lawyer, a banker, a plumber, or a clergyman, has the firm theory that he could edit a newspaper better than it is being edited, could write at least as well as anyone who is writing. The newspaper profession has no side, no hocus pocus of mystery, no grandiose flourish of technique that is in other professions gives pause to the average man.

It was the late Hammond Lamont greatest of all modern editorial writers I think--who urged unceasingly the bearing aloft of "the flaming torch of journalism". It should be borne in the domain of sport as elsewhere. As the writer has said in a foregoing paragraph, there are a few-a small minority--who have received inspiration from their new relations with those who conduct and participate in amateur sport, who have developed a sense of dignity and of responsibility, who have come to a conception of the root significance of the amateur game. But such as these are not a little mystified as to the trend, aims, and scope of the administrative side of "gentleman sports conducted for gentlemen". Perhaps in the last analysis the whole problem rests with those who arrive; rests with them to defined standards, to draw lines, to bring present-day amateurism flush with the might of high opinion.