AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

Now that Coue and King Tut-ankh Amen have begun to pall on the readers of our popular dailies, the journalists are feeling the need of a new sensation to fill their papers with copy and their dinner pails with sandwiches. Fortunately, for them, the obliging American athletes contributed materially to Oxford's victories on Saturday, both in track and crew; and the Sunday sporting pages rang with the "glad news" of American supremacy, while editorials sounded serious warnings of "this dangerous American Imperialism". The cause of all this turmoil was the presence of two Americans in the Oxford shell and five who were point-scorers on the Oxford track team which distinctly added a red and white touch to the customary "blues" of the supposedly English athletic classics. But with the events over the whole subject should join the rest of the rotting bones of old sensations in a well deserved grave.

After all, the agitation in English sport circles and the furor aroused over here at this seeming Americanization of English sport is scarcely justified by facts. Students from this country have been going to Oxford and Cambridge ever since Jamestown days, and the institution of Rhodes Scholarships certainly has not lessened the number. It is only natural that this continued inflow should make some impression on England's educational pool.

This year the American representation happened to include some good athletes: they naturally practiced the sports of their choice and chanced to be successful. In the future, however, the best athletes may not emigrate to England after their four years here: the proportion of "stars" will vary from year to year like the New England snow fall. But that the relatively small number of American students who annually go to Oxford and Cambridge will ever constitute a "menace" to English Universities is quite ridiculous. The very presence of Americans is a compliment to British scholarship and aids in the maintenance of a tradition, of no small value to both countries. Not until whole crews, track teams entire, and complete chapters of Phi Beta Kappa sail for English shores can the pessimist, English or American have any grounds for worry about the gravity of that American problem.