The War-as-a-Sport idea was also encouraged by the opinion still stoutly held by many persons that a good sportsman is necessarily a good soldier, and that the qualities which ensure success in Athletics or Sport make also for success in War:  but this is true of certain of them only.  In so far as Athletics and Sport tend to manliness, self-reliance, good comradeship, endurance of bodily hardship, and contempt of danger, they are no doubt an excellent preparatory school for War.  But there is one quality without the possession of which no man is held to be a good sportsman, and that is the acceptance of defeat or non-success with equanimity and good-humour as “part of the game.”  Without this quality Athletics and Sport would, in fact, become impossible.

In the soldier, however, this temperament is a dangerous gift.  It led to reverses, captures, loss of convoys and other “regrettable incidents” being regarded with stoical composure as “part of the game”; and the victims were condoled with on their “shocking bad luck.”  It would have been difficult to discern from the bearing and demeanour of the typical officer whether he was at the moment a prisoner of war in the Model School at Pretoria, or had just taken part in the magnificent cavalry charge by which Kimberley was relieved.  The former plight did not greatly depress him, nor did the latter phase of military life greatly elate him.  It is probable that the War would have been brought to a successful close at a much earlier date if throughout the British Army and especially among the officers hearty disgust and indignation at the failures of the first few months had taken the place of a light-hearted accommodation to circumstances.  The companions of Ulysses may

          With a frolic welcome take
  The thunder and the sunshine,

but it is not War.

The British officer played at war in South Africa much in the same way that he hunted or played cricket or polo at home.  He enjoyed the sport and the game, did his best for his own side, and rejoiced if he was successful, but was not greatly disturbed when he lost.  A dictum attributed to the Duke of Wellington says that the Battle of Waterloo was won upon the Playing Fields at Eton.  It would not be so very far from the truth to say that the guns at Sannah’s Post were captured on the polo-ground at Hurlingham; that Magersfontein was lost at Lord’s; that Spionkop was evacuated at Sandown; and that the war lingered on for thirty-two months in the Quorn and Pytchley coverts.

The sporting view of War was recognized and confirmed in Army Orders and official reports, in which the words “bag,” “drive,” “stop,” and some other sporting terms not infrequently appeared.  No one would reasonably object to the judicious and illuminating use of metaphor, but there are metaphors which impair the dignity of a cause and degrade it in the eyes of those whose duty is to maintain that cause.  When the advance of a British Division