Strategy or cunning is an element
invariably present in games, as also in warlike pursuits and in
the chase. In all of these employments strategy tends to develop
into finesse and chicanery. Chicanery, falsehood, browbeating,
hold a well-secured place in the method of procedure of any
athletic contest and in games generally. The habitual employment
of an umpire, and the minute technical regulations governing the
limits and details of permissible fraud and strategic advantage,
sufficiently attest the fact that fraudulent practices and
attempts to overreach one's opponents are not adventitious
features of the game. In the nature of the case habituation to
sports should conduce to a fuller development of the aptitude for
fraud; and the prevalence in the community of that predatory
temperament which inclines men to sports connotes a prevalence of
sharp practice and callous disregard of the interests of others,
individually and collectively. Resort to fraud, in any guise and
under any legitimation of law or custom, is an expression of a
narrowly self-regarding habit of mind. It is needless to dwell at
any length on the economic value of this feature of the sporting
character.
In this connection it is to be noted that the most obvious
characteristic of the physiognomy affected by athletic and other
sporting men is that of an extreme astuteness.
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