admitted to a share in the management as soon as the position that the game had reached in each of them seemed to warrant it. In the face of these facts it can hardly be argued that the original London monopoly has been unduly maintained, and to our mind it seems hardly likely that any other system of election than that in vogue could have produced a more thoroughly representative body.
During the many years of their existence they have had many difficult questions to deal with, such as disputes and rivalries between districts, clubs, and individuals, the adjustment of which has sometimes demanded the exercise of much tact and diplomacy; the selection of teams, a thankless task which they entrust to a sub-committee of their most competent judges, with the proviso that they must all be members of different clubs; the suppression of professionalism, a veritable labour of Hercules from which, in the best interests of the game, they have not shrunk, though we must wait yet awhile to see the results of their policy, which is only now being put to the test; and, lastly, the reform of the laws, a question on which their policy has always been conservative in the best sense of the word—a policy that is to say of always keeping pace with, but never going in advance of, that public opinion, in the forming of which they themselves take no small part. As a signal testimony to their success they can point with pride to the fact that no vote of want of confidence has ever been carried against them at a general meeting; on the contrary, whenever a vote has been taken, their policy has always been endorsed (with the single exception of a question as to which of two Northerners should be elected to a vacant vice-presidency), and that no less decisively on the great question of the rupture with the International Board than on all minor points that have occurred from time to time.
