ng else in life but golf or play
lawn-tennis. And this tendency to specialise is undoubtedly increasing.
Meanwhile it will never be rooted out of the American character and in
departments of sport where it, and it alone, will bring pre-eminence,
Englishmen will either have to do as Americans do or, sooner or later,
consent to be defeated. There is nothing in the practice at which the
Englishman can fairly cavil. Americans have still much the fewer sports;
and it is the national habit to take up one and concentrate on it with
all one's might.[420:1]

A more difficult aspect of the situation has to do with the question of
the definition of "gentleman-amateur"; the fact being, of course, that
the same definition has not the same significance in the two countries.
The radical difficulty lies in the fact that the word "gentleman" in its
English sense of a man of gentle birth has no application to America.
Let this not be understood as a statement that there are any fewer
gentlemen in America or that the word is not used. But its usage is not
re-inforced, its limits are not defined, as in England, by any line of
cleavage in the social system. A large number of the gentlemen of
America are farmers' sons; more than half are the sons of men who
commenced life in very humble positions, and nearly all are the sons of
men who are engaged in trade or in business, the majority of them being
destined to go into trade or business (and to begin at the beginning)
themselves. In England, of course, the process of the obliteration of
the old line is going on with great rapidity. In America, on the other
hand, there is a tendency towards the drawing of a somewhat
corresponding line. But the fact remains that at present there exists
this fundamental distinction and the consequence is that Englishmen
continue to find among American "amateurs" and in teams of American
"gentlemen," individuals who would not be accepted into the same
categories in England.

But what Englishmen should endeavour to understand is that the man who
on the surface seems to belong to a class which in England would be
objectionable in the company of gentlemen probably has none of those
characteristics which would make him objectionable were he English. He
has far more of the characteristics of a gentleman than of the other
qualities. The qualities which go to make a "gentleman," even in the
English sense, are many and complex; but the assumption is that they are
all p