"It is so! All is over! That which I feared has come to pass. I have ventured too near the boundary, and now the future holds for me but one thing-madness!" When they came to arrest me, I was, it appears, in a frightful state. My white, wild face was terrifying to see; my clothes were torn to shreds. But, by Heaven, to pass through such a time as I passed through that evening without going mad-does not that prove that I possess an absolutely indestructible brain? However, I did nothing worse than tearing my clothes and smashing the glasses. And apropos of glasses, permit me to give you a word of advice. If at any time one of you should have to endure what I endured that night, be sure you veil the mirrors of the room in which you are. Cover them as you cover them when there is a death in the house. Cover them well!

After that I remember nothing until the arrival of the police. I inquired what the time was. "Nine o'clock," they replied. I could scarcely believe that only three hours had passed since the death of Alexis.

But one thing I recollect distinctly: my Thought, or the Voice. That, at least, was real.

"Dr. Kerjentzef thought that he simulated madness, and he was in reality mad."

I have just felt my pulse-one hundred and eighty. The mere recollection of that voice has sufficed to agitate me thus.

VI.

WELL, gentlemen of science, it is to you that I must look for an answer. Am I mad or am I not mad? Naturally you will be divided in your opinion. Half of you will say one thing, half the other; but, gentlemen, I promise to believe all of you! Only give me your opinion! And here I will relate to you yet another trifling but very interesting incident, something which may prove of assistance to your enlightened minds.

One calm, peaceful evening, here, within these white walls, I observed that the nurse, Macha, was looking frightened and upset, as though cowed by some awful force. She left me, and I remained seated upon the bed, thinking of all the things that I would like to do. And it seemed to me that I wanted to do some very queer things. I, Dr. Kerjentzef, wanted to howl! Not merely to cry out, but to howl-as the others do.

I

wanted to tear my clothes and to scratch myself. I wanted to take my shirt by the collar, to finger it at first gently, then suddenly to rend it from top to bottom. And I wanted -I, Dr. Kerjentzef-to go down on hands and knees and crawl! Around me all was quiet. The snow-flakes glistened on the window-panes, and not far off Macha was praying silently. I spent a long time in making up my mind what to do. If I howled that would make a noise and cause a scandal. If I tore my shirt I should be found out the next day. Then, quite rationally, I chose to gratify my third wish-the wish to crawl. Nobody would hear me, and if anyone came in and saw me, I would say that I was looking for a lost button.

I was seized with terror and with a sudden desire to do three things at the same timeto howl, to crawl, to scratch myself. I became angry.

"You wish to crawl?" I asked myself. There was no reply. The wish had died down.

"You wish to crawl?" I persisted.
Again there was no reply.
"Then crawl!" I said.

After turning up my sleeves I went down on all-fours and crawled. And when I had in this way traversed about half the length of the room, I was so immensely tickled by my own folly that I sat down on the floor just where I happened to be and began to laugh, laugh, laugh.

As I still retained my habitual belief that we can by research attain to a measure of knowledge, I set myself to discover the source of my senseless desires. Clearly they (the wish to crawl and the rest of them) were the product of auto-suggestion. The fixed idea of my pretended insanity had called forth. these insane longings, and as soon as they had been gratified I found that I no longer had them, and that I was not mad. My reasoning, you perceive, is very simple and logical, but

But all the same I have crawled; I have crawled. What am I? A madman who excuses himself, or a sane man of intellect who is in process of becoming mad?

Come to my succour, gentlemen, you men of science. Let the weight of your authority incline the scale one way or the other. Solve for me this terrible, this cruel problem. Ah, how anxiously I await your verdict! Am I mad?

Freddie Welsh, Light-weight Champion of the World.

Photo. Hana.

Sensations

of a Boxer.

By
FREDDIE
WELSH

(LIGHT-WEIGHT CHAMPION

OF THE WORLD).

With Blows Specially Photographed by the Alfieri Picture Series.

I

HE brutality of boxing! suppose there can be no revival of any sport unless there are critics ready to pull it to pieces-critics, too, who in the majority of instances display a colossal ignorance of their subjects. To many of these, modern boxing means but the survival of the old prize-ring, when men stood up and battered one another beyond recognition, and when the crowd round the ropes were equal to anything in the crooked way.

But I wish these critics who decry boxing would attend one of the big contests of to-day. If they could be induced to do this, I feel certain they would recognize the fact

that they were in the wrong. They would see, not brutality, but two perfectly-trained athletes, men who must of necessity live clean lives, just battling for the mastery. In contest after contest not a drop of blood is spilt; it is a scientific struggle, with not a trace of anger introduced from the start to the finish.

Remember, in the first place, that to-day we find the boxer wearing gloves of a recognized weight and pattern, and just soft bandages underneath. Soft bandages, mind you, and the referee takes special care to see that there is nothing in them that can inflict any injury upon an opponent. If he is doubtful, he orders them to be removed and others substituted. And if a boxer thinks he

can wind yard after yard of bandages round his hands he quickly discovers his mistake. He is ordered to remove as much as will reduce them to ordinary dimensions; they are just to protect the wearer's hands, and that is all.

Just as, in fencing, we use foils with buttons on the points, and the more skilful fencer is the man who wins on the hits he may register he cannot injure an opponent; the button prevents that-so by putting gloves on our hands the possibility of inflicting any lasting hurt upon a man you are boxing with is reduced to a negligible quantity. Brutality is absolutely impossible.

One of the duties of the referee is to see that neither man is badly punished. He has the power vested in him to stop the contest at any time he thinks fit. Both men have to pass a searching medical examination before they go into the ring; they have to be in the very best physical condition, and, should either be outclassed, then the contest is stopped and the victory awarded to the other man.

This fact cannot be denied; we read of its happening again and again during the boxing season. Yet the boxer who loses is never satisfied that he is beaten. He always feels that he wishes to go on, that he thinks he can beat his opponent, and that he isn't being hurt. Can any sane man say after this that boxing is by any means brutality personified?

With the bare knuckles, now happily. placed under the ban of the ruling authorities, brutality was possible. Indeed, I would go still further, and say that the old prize-fights were brutal beyond question.

But the boxer of to-day is not the beetlebrowed and scarred veteran of the past. He must, if he hopes to approach championship class, be a man possessed of brains, a man with a capacity for thinking all the while a contest is in progress. He must be cool and level-headed. Once he loses the command of his temper all is lost. He becomes wild and erratic, he loses touch with the finer points of the sport altogether, he becomes just a target for the gloves of his opponent. They tap him from all quarters with irritating. frequency, the points are scored up against him at a lightning rate, and, although he may be strong and well at the end of the final round, he is the loser.

Take any of the modern champions, and what do we find? Just that they have come out of their contests practically unmarked. Speaking for myself, during my career in the ring I have taken part in one hundred and

thirteen contests. My photograph speaks for itself. Do I look a battered veteran ? I know I would not win any prize beauty championship, but I am just driving home the point that a man need not carry the marks of the fray about with him. In nearly ten years of boxing with one hundred and thirteen opponents and a thousand sparring partners I have never yet had a black eye.

Take other champions and ex-champions, such as Willie Ritchie, Packy McFarland, Jimmy Britt, J. J. Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, Bombardier Wells, and Georges Carpentier. Indeed, I could lengthen my list almost indefinitely. They are practically unmarked; if the ordinary man was not told that they were boxers, he certainly would not guess their profession from their personal appearance. The manual worker can be identified by the contour of his hands, the boxer might be anything a man about town, or just an ordinary athlete.

Now it may be argued that I have simply said there is no brutality about modern boxing, but that I haven't proved my case. I fancy I hear someone saying, “Of course, Freddie Welsh won't admit boxing is brutal. He's a boxer himself." So let me tell you all about the sensations of boxing, of how a man feels in the ring, and what actually happens when he is knocked out.

I have been boxing now for nearly ten years, and I have never been knocked out in my life. But I've been near enough to it to know exactly what it feels like. Only one knock-out blow is really painful, and that is when you are struck on the body just below the chest. That's painful for the moment, but it's no worse than being knocked out, temporarily winded, while playing football.

Before going into the details of the knockout blow, however, I should like to say something about the photographs which illustrate this article. They were specially taken, and each illustrates a blow I used when I beat Willie Ritchie for the world's title. They are potential knock-outs, but I would also like to point out that both Ritchie and myself were quite fresh when we had finished boxing our twenty rounds. We were unmarked, and I had won-easily, so the papers said—on points. Skill and science, mind you, not brutality.

This little explanation made, let me get on with what it feels like to box, especially as compared with other violent forms of exercise, such as rowing, cycling, and running. There is no need for me to take any other than these three sports. I have taken part

in all of them, and I know how I've felt. I also know how other fellows, friends of mine, have felt, while even walking is much more punishing in its effects than boxing.

A world's champion in long-distance walking, Mr. T. E. Hammond, once described his sensations. He said he wouldn't have minded if a motor-car had come along and run over him. All he knew was that he had to keep on walking, and that if he had been killed he would have known that his agony and struggle against physical exhaustion would have been over. Now, I've never felt like that when I've been boxing, so walking, if you want to argue, must be more brutal than using the gloves.

At Henley a sculler has fainted and fallen out of his boat before now. In the University Boatrace between Putney and Mortlake on the Thames, members of both crews have been in a collapsed state at the finish of a hardrowed race. They have been photographed lying about in all positions, dead to the world for the time being.

Within a few minutes of a boxing contest being finished the men have been rubbed down, they are dressed, and they are as fit as possible. It's very different with other branches of athletics, though, and a glance at the photographs of men who have run a hard race, a hundred yards, a quarter of a mile, a mile, and so on, will prove how they have been punished. Their faces are drawn and distorted with agony. Nothing of this is to be seen on the face of a boxer in the most strenuous contest. It is perfectly easy to verify my statements in this respect. Go to any cinema reproduction of a boxing contest, or look at any illustrated paper publishing photographs of a contest, and what do you see? The men are frequently smiling broadly, and even if they are serious it is over what is after all a serious business. There is no look of physical agony about them, at all events.

Now let me take what happens after the finish of a hard run. More frequently than not a man gets to the tape and he falls flat on the turf by the side of the cinders. He is "out" to the last ounce, and I have known them to be in the dressing-room in a collapsed condition for a very long while after they have been carried or assisted off the track. At the end of a twenty-round boxing contest, however, the men walk to their corners unassisted and sit down on their chairs for a couple of minutes, the winner trots across the ring and shakes hands with his opponent, they duck through the ropes, and stroll away

to the dressing-room none the worse for their exertions.

And just take this from me. Don't imagine that because a boxer goes down on the floor of the ring and provides an imitation of a contortion act that he is always badly hurt and suffering pain. There are boxers who may not relish their task, you know, and if they think they can persuade the referee that they have been fouled they take that chance. Occasionally, of course, a boxer is fouled, but you don't find that with the boxers in championship class, as a rule. In the whole of my career, for instance, I have won only a couple of times on fouls, and I am proud to be able to say that I have never lost a fight on a foul. Accidents may happen, certainly, but a champion boxer should not give them any chance of happening.

The six days' cycle races may be dismissed in a very few words. The men suffer more agony in one of these contests than a boxer does in all his career, yet they are not stigmatized as being brutal. No, I am afraid there are those who allow their feelings to run away with their judgment. If this is not so, then I cannot understand the attitude which has been taken up by just a section of the public.

Let me start here with the sensations of a boxer when he gets into the ring. Pictures play a very big part in all the championship contests now, at home and abroad, and to secure these pictures for the cinema and the newspapers a strong, steady light is an absolute necessity. When I boxed Ritchie, for instance, we were under lights that were equal to one hundred and sixty thousand candle-power. The effect of this was to throw the ring out as a big patch of gleaming white, while the rest of Olympia was shrouded in velvety blackness.

You are sitting in your corner waiting for the word to begin. There is a confused murmur from the packed house, with perhaps a sudden cry stabbing out of the partial stillness. As I was sitting waiting for Ritchie this was all I could hear, until at last came the voices of my supporters, who had come up from Wales in their hundreds. It was like a crowd at a football match, and I am not ashamed to admit the tears sprang to my eyes as "The Land of My Fathers" boomed out. We Welshmen are emotional people-it's in our Celtic temperament—and you would be really surprised to know the effect this great. vocal demonstration had upon me. I rose and bowed my thanks, but had I been asked to have returned a word of thanks just then

my heart would have been too full. Boxers are only human after all. I wish some of our detractors would only think of this sometimes.

This was before the contest commenced, but when he is boxing seriously a man has no ears or attention for anything outside the ring. He has to concentrate all his attention upon the business in hand; he has to think of what his opponent is about to do, and the best method by which to checkmate him. It's like a player in a football match. The crowd on the touch-line and in the stands may be yelling itself hoarse, but the players hear very little of what is going on. They are attending to the game. So are the boxers.

Now we come to the knock-out, that socalled terrible blow which has been called all kinds of names. But I wonder if many of those who talk so glibly about the knock-out blow know what it actually means?

A knock-out means that a man receives a blow and sinks to the floor. If unable to regain his feet in ten seconds he has lost the contest. Ten seconds, mind you. If a man were allowed thirty seconds in which to recover, there might be some excuse for those who call boxing a brutal sport, but ten seconds goes by like a flash. Try counting ten seconds off on your watch, and you'll know what I mean. You are no sooner down than you have to think about getting up again. You may be up in eleven seconds, but that's too late. It's

all over,

and

your

oppo

nent

has

won.

The

most

a bit, but not nearly so much if you get it from a gloved hand as if you get it from the head or foot of a player. You read of footballers being "temporarily winded," but they go off in the touch-line for a couple of minutes and then come back and resume play again.

Trying to collar a man running with the ball in Rugby football frequently ends in your being knocked out. I know, for I was a football player while at school. But there's no shriek about football being a brutal game, is there? Yet men don't wear gloves on their feet or their heads, and I'd rather get a blow from a gloved hand than the other variety any day in the week. You get a kick in the chest when playing Association football, and out you go for minutes. And in boxing, if you don't get up in ten seconds you are finished. Now, I ask any fair-minded man or woman, which is the more brutal? Not boxing, certainly.

Then there is the blow under the heart, about which a lot has been written and said by those who really do not know much about the game. A blow under the heart does not affect a man, as a rule, for the ribs and lower chest-muscle protect that particular spot. If a man does go down, and stops down for ten seconds, from a blow on that portion of his anatomy, it will be found, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that it is really a "blow in the wind" that has worked the damage.

count as knock outs, but which leave no ill-effects in their wake. In this case there is no incentive to brutality on the part of a boxer. A very light tap indeed, put on the proper spot, is all that is necessary. A sledge-hammer blow is not called for; the