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Condescension of Various Proph ¬ ets of the Figure System Recalls James Eussoll Lowells LowellsFamous Famous Essay Excellence of ofAmerican American Sires BT SALVATOR SALVATORThe The late James Russell Lowell one of tho foremost American authors of his day and during his career Americas ambassador to the courts of St James and of Madrid among other memorable things indited an essay to which he gave the title On a Certain Condescension In Foreigners His allusion was to the patronizing attitude sometimes affable but of ener not so which citizens of transAtlantic countries habitual ¬ ly adopt toward the one which he repre ¬ sented In both wit and wisdom as well as personal charm and manly dignity Lowell had no superiors and few equals He was not an Irritable man by nature nor one peevishly perturbed by trifles But contin ¬ uous residence abroad despite his high sta ¬ tion in diplomatic life at length mado It imperative to give utterance to his senti ¬ ments regarding something that had even ¬ tually got on his nerves Hence his famous essay which at once became and will always remain one of the most notable expressions of Americanism AmericanismMuch Much water has flowed under the bridges since that period Also much American blood has crimsoned European rivers and moistened European earth Also have bil ¬ lions of American money been expended in tho effort to help a warmad Europe suc ¬ ceeded by a warwrecked one put itself to rights At times during the process last named the certain condescension was softpedaled In favor of something well something let us say more diplomatic But now the sturm and drang is over or at least the worst part of It the temporarily recessive quality Is again bobbing up se ¬ renely it being like other characteristics to speak In Mendelian terms really a dom ¬ inant inantI I notice In a journal which devotes con ¬ siderable space to turf topics a letter from a foreign critic who Is In a disturbed but still condescending mood He takes excep ¬ tions to those native writers upon the thor ¬ oughbred who do not share his views and so to speak spurns their allegations By his own confession he is the chief propa ¬ gandist In America for the extirpation of our native American racing families and their replacement by others which one and all are purely of British origin and without other blood In other words he Is the Local Prophet of the Figure System SystemBAJ BAJ EFFECTS OF THE FIGUKE SYSTEM SYSTEMIt It has been pointed out by numerous writ ¬ ers including my Insignificant self that the propaganda for tho Figure System has done irreparable damage to the American thor opghbred breed as it had been laboriously and devotedly bred up in America for nearly two hundred years through either direct or indirect depreciation of many of Its finest products The intimation also has been given that the motive behind this was not entirely disinterested that the weeding out of a largo portion of our breeding stock meant that it must be replaced by other material and that this material according to the Figure System could be obtained only where the Figure System makes Its headquarters 1 e Newmarket NewmarketThis This our prophet avers is a base insin ¬ uation And his plea of defense takes the following turn part I can conscientiously affirm affirmthat that in my advocacy of the use of Figure horses and mares in preference to those which trace to obscure American taproots I do so because of my wish to have Ameri ¬ can turfmen and breeders have better luck in their racing and stock breeding endeav ¬ ors and also to see if in time tho thorough ¬ bred horse as bred in the United States cannot be made to command respect else ¬ where whereTho Tho condescension which imbues these ele ¬ vated sentiments in something which very likely was not deliberately meant but is just natural innate and irrepressible The author has contributed extensively to Amer ¬ ican turf journals for a number of years past and everything he has written has very naively displayed this constitutional or rather racial characterlctic But never more explicitly I think than in the present example exampleThat That the American thoroughbred com ¬ mands no respect elsewhere than at home as he alleges seems to me something almost in the nature of a gratuitous insult The first American race horses taken to Europe to compete for its classics mado their pres ¬ ence felt in no uncertain way and from that time to the present they have sustained the precedent set threequarters of a century ago by Prioress and Starke As a matter of fact considering tho comparatively few American horses taken abroad and tho enormous number of foreign ones imported to America the Americans have much the better of the argument For the Imported horses which have won classic races in this country have been pitifully few fewAmerican American horses and American blood have made themselves respected again and again at both Epsom and Longchamps as well as on many other Old World courses And American blood appears today in the ances ¬ tries of animals prominent both as perform ¬ ers and producers on both sides of tho Eng lish Channel As I write the summary lies before me of the first great English handi cap of 1922 the Lincolnshire Handicap de elded March 22 Thirtyfive horses started and the winner Glanoly Is a son of Orby the Derby winner of 1907 whose dam Rhcda B was bred in America and Is from one of thcsa obscure native American families outside tho Figure System and the thor ¬ oughbred pale paleAilEIUCAZf AilEIUCAZf RACE HORSE EXCELLENCE EXCELLENCEIf If the American thoroughbred elsewhere than at home is not however as much re ¬ spected as Americans could desire they may tjjank precisely such propaganda as that of the writer above quoted for being one of tho prime factors That and the manner in which American turfmen and breeders cred ¬ ulous and unsuspecting allow themselves to be bamboozled ind misled by it V VThe The propagandist like Hamlets guilty mother doth protest too much His altru istio declarations do not square with hia practices Besides that the world ia J y this time too thoroughly undeceived to ha e other than wilful illusions regarding British com ¬ mercialism The Napoleonic epigram A nation of shopkeepers compressed every ¬ thing into four words over a century ago And nowhere Is shop more permanently and openly kept than at Newmarket nor by any class of commercial envoys Is trade more assiduously drummed up than by those who represent it hi foreign lands It Is never any trouble to show goods to cover tho billboards with posters or to put a spoke in the wheel of a competing line lineAmericans Americans may be childlike and trusting when foreign missionaries are expounding their gospels but it Is really too too much to ask them to believe In the altruistic pose of the propagandist Why not be perfectly frank about it Or would this be going against that traditional Insular hypocrisy for so many centuries a subject of obser ¬ vation and discussion by philosophers of other races as for instance Ralph Waldo Emerson and Hlppolyte Adoplho Taine No missionaries from Newmarket as from London Liverpool or Birmingham must camouflage the cash account with a Bible and just at present that of Bruce Lowe is the Holy Writ of the established church But only simple souls happy in leading strings can believe that outside it no salva ¬ tion mrlflta
