The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, August 20, 1910. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 881, 20 August 1910, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, August 20, 1910. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Viewing the matter from the standpoint of broad social interest, the best thing that could have happened did happen at Reno on Monday last, says the San Francisco “Argonaut” of July 9th. If Jeffries had whipped Johnson, it would have tended to sustain interest in the pugilistic game, which as it has come to be played is a demoralisation and an abomination. The practical failure of the fight as a spectacle, combined with Johnson’s success, tends to put the whole business in contempt here and everywhere. Of course, there will be ring contests of one sort and another in the future as in the past, but probably we shall not have another “ big fight ” in a decade. Ring “sport” has lost whatever claims to respectability it may ever have had ; it has lost its flavour, lost its vogue. And for this the world of decency should be devoutly thankful. The assertion that the “white race” suffers a loss of prestige in this outcome is ridiculous. Jeffries represented not the white race, but the spirit of vulgar hoodlumism. Despite the assertions of social and political strenuosity, in some high places as well as in all low places, the white race does not base its claim to ascendancy in the world upon its capacity to hit and to dodge and upon the insensibility which endures punishment. The tests of power among men and races rest not so much upon brawn as upon character, not so much upon heft and density of body as upon weight and force of intellect. Your “ best man ” from the standpoint of the prizefighter is by no

means the ‘ ‘ best man ” from the standpoint of civilisation. The game of the ring is one in which the lower order of man may have the advantage over a higher order of man. Undoubtedly, the least skilful prizefighter could ‘ ‘ knock out” the president of Harvard College in one swift round. But that is far from proving that the ring champion is the better man.