The Men We Can't Beat

The victory of the Oxford-Cambridge cross-country racers over Cornell at Rochampton, 29 points to 25, is a reminder (not especially needed) that the British Empire yet furnishes rivals worthy our best sporting steel. Eight months ago an English team at the University of Pennsylvania won the two-mile relay in the world's record time. The Empire was our runner-up in the Olympic games. We won the Davis Cup, but we must remember that out of the fifteen contestants for it the Australasians have won six times, the British five, and American four. Next June we will send a polo team to England to try to win the Hurlingham Trophy again, and our prospects are not the brightest. We recently saw our open golf championship go into English hands. America can claim to lead the world in sport, but any tendency toward boasting is checked by the repeated British demonstrations of ability to score against us.

In contests between the British and Americans the British can hardly forget that some of their best runners will never break a tape, their best golfers never tee off, their best polo players never lift a mallet. The runners made their last sprint in the smoke of the Somme, and the polo players died putting their final ounce behind a bayonet. Australasians who watched America win at Auckland must have thought of Wilding, the giant who played so smashingly at Forest Hills the summer of 1914 and a few months later was gone at Gallipoli. Not far from a million British died in the field; the battle dead of little Australia alone equalled ours. Our rivals are too good sportsmen to mention the fact, but all the more reason why we should do so. These brave dead we cannot beat. New York Evening Post.