Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 284, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1918 — SHOWING HOW SCOTS FEEL ON ATHLEETICE [ARTICLE]

SHOWING HOW SCOTS FEEL ON ATHLEETICE

Sixty Thousand of Thom Turn Out to See Soccer Game. Public Needs Recreation and Lota <H It In The*® Trvjng Tiwiee—Any Form of Amusement Helps— z Game In Canada. It has been claimed that sports In the United States should be abandoned for the duration of the war because the public is too much interested in the developments on the battlefields in France. For that reason the baseball season was cut short, football hung on the ropes and other athietic events are barely able to stacker along. Perhaps this is a good th" g for the country, but few can see it, 'Writes a correspondent. The public needs recreation, and lots of it, in these trying times. Any form of amusement will help, and to .prove it look oyer the following cablegram from London: “All soccer games in Britain were dwarfed recently by, the big cup tie tn Glasgow, in which the Bangers and Celtics met in the final tie. for the Glasgow cup before the crowd of 60,000 people. The Bangers won by the score of 2 to 0.”

This is the fifth year of the war in England and the suffering there has been greater than it ever will be here. Hence that 60,000 crowd is significant and shows the popularity of sports. The same is true in Canada, Where last summer baseball flourished and horse racing drew big crowds. Duriag the first year of the war sports of all sorts languished in England and Canada, but improved in the second year, and for the past twd years interest in all sorts of sports has grown to proportions fully equaling the period before the war and even surpassing it in some lines. Perhaps it is on this fact that some of the baseball magnates base their faith that the g;<ne will flourish next year. Conditions cannot be much different here than in England or Canada. Americans more than any other people demand recreation and there appears no reason why sport should not awaken here, as it has acrqps the water.