Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 162, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1919 — DEMPSEY NO CHAMPION. [ARTICLE]

DEMPSEY NO CHAMPION.

The victory which Jack Dempsey won in Toledo Friday does not make him America’s champion fighter. There was a time when there was opportunity to fight, and something worth fighting for, but Dempsey refused it. He is a young man of 24 and in prime physical condition, but when the world was calling for fighters he could not hear the call. The Republican does not know on what grounds he escaped the draft, but he did escape it. It is hardly to be assumed that he kept out of ithe army by pleading that he was employed in an occupation essential to the maintenance of the industrial life of the nation. His employment was merely that of a prize fighter and it will not be seriously contended that that is a necessary business. , Dempsey was a slacker when the world needed fighters. His so-called honor won in Toledo is not to bd thought of in contrast with the record of Sergeant York, for instance. That championship belt bestowed upon him for dethroning the former champion should have engraved on it: “To Jack Dempsey, slacker.” One of the best of the writers of the news of sport, Gnantland Rice, does the subject ample justice in the following: “Let us have no illusions about our new heavyweight champion. He is a marvel in the ring, the greatest boxing or the greatest hitting machine even the old-timers here have ever seen. But he isn’t. the world’s champion fighter. Not by a margin of 50,000,000 men who either stood, or were ready to stand, the test of cold steel and exploding shells for anything from six cents to one dollar a day. It would be an insult to every young American who sleeps today in Flanders or Lorraine, from the Somme to the Argonne, to Crown Dempsey with any laurel built of fighting courage. He missed the big chance of his life to prove his own manhood before bis own soul, but beyond that he stands today as the ring marvel of the century, a puncher who will be unbeatable as long as he desires to ; stay off the primrose way and maintain the wonderful vitality of a won- ' derful system. But he lost his , chance for the big fight—ah, what a fight for brave men.”