id="Page_9" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[9]"/> have walked many times over the lines of our tee shots, and the shadow of the monument that he built to commemorate his invasion of Albion, almost lies across the course from which Albion herself, uninvaded, may be seen. And the Mayor of Boulogne gives prizes to the British golfers who make the best golf on Napoleon’s camp. I come to realise the depth of the meaning of the lines cut into a marble tablet that I saw on the side of a staircase in the Museum at Boulogne one day—“France and England have more good sense than all the world,” and those lines were put on the stone more than sixty years ago.

France is fair and free, but the game is played in Europe where the times and conditions are not at all the same. There is golf in Russia, and to it there was added a new course but recently. At the first thought it seems a little odd that such a peaceful game should be played in holy and revolutionary Russia even by Britishers. They have had two courses in Russia for a long time past—one near Moscow and the other at Mourino, a small village a few versts out from St. Petersburg. The men who play here are of a hardy, determined strain, fine men for pioneers. To get their golf they have to drive thirteen miles out from the capital over bad roads; and in order to obtain a fair amount of satisfaction from their game they have to returf their putting greens almost every year, owing to the extreme sandiness of the soil. The Kaiser is encouraging the game in Germany, and has given prizes for it; there are eight clubs in Italy; and others in Austria, Holland, Belgium, and all the rest. The game has flourished for twelve years past in the dominions of the Sultan of Turkey, that is to say at Bagdad, and the golfers there are pleased to tell you that their course is no miniature affair as are so many at the outposts of the empire of St. Andrews, but that it consists of full eighteen holes, and that, in the desert, they are very sporting indeed.

It goes without saying that the game flourishes greatly in all the Colonies. In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the others there are little booms of golf in progress, each of its own kind. At Pretoria and at many places at the Cape the greens consist of diamondiferous gravel, smooth and sparkling, and the first local rule of the Kimberley Club startles the newly-arrived golfer from the homeland, for it tells him that “It shall be lawful for a player to level the ground on the putting green in any manner he pleases.” In India there are some forty flourishing clubs, and that at Calcutta, with its five hundred members and two courses of nine holes each, having been established for nearly eighty years, takes rank as one of the premier clubs of the world. There is the Aden Club in Arabia, the Royal Bangkok in Siam, where an old and very imposing Siamese temple does duty for clubhouse, and others all over Asia, as one might almost say. There are many golf clubs in the Argentine Republic and the other South American States. The Sandwich Islands are full of the game, for there are five clubs there. In the East Indies there are three, and in the West Indies there are eight. Wherever the Britisher goes he leaves his trail of golf behind him. There is a story of Captain Adair holding a golf competition in his camp when pitched on one of the passes leading into Thibet, at a height of sixteen thousand feet above the sea-level. I have no information about the game having been played in the North Polar regions; but I am told that when the recent British Antarctic Expedition was made in the Discovery, the Commander, Captain Scott, who is a keen golfer, took some clubs down there with him, and in some leisure moments “had a knock,” by way of reminding him of the old links at home, and of seeing what the sensation of South Polar golf was like. It is said that forged iron has a peculiarly cold and numbing touch in the frozen south.

It is the same game everywhere, and the law is always taken from Fifeshire; but the conditions and makeshifts are sometimes peculiar. We have said how at the Cape they putt on gritty earth that smacks of diamonds, how in China there are graves for bunkers, and how across the Channel, Napoleon’s trenches serve for the same purpose. Boulogne, after all, is only in the nature of a corollary to our courses at Walton Heath and Huntercombe, for hereabouts the golfers play where the legions of mighty Cæsar were encamped, and the stables and the kitchens that Cæsar made, huge pits deep in the earth, are in the line of play, and things are so arranged that they constitute fine traps for erring balls, and offer remunerative opportunities for skill with iron clubs in playing out of them. And yet, if one must play bad shots, it is well that they should be played in the direction in which Cæsar dug, for these pits were made so long ago and are so deep that they are often beautifully turfed with soft springy stuff, which anywhere except in a pit would be a delight to play from, being so congenial to one’s iron. We must applaud the Romans in this matter. It is nearly a pleasure to go into their kitchens and stables; they were made so long ago and they are so green and nice. There is golf at Old Calabar on the West Coast of Africa, and there the putting “greens” are made of fine coal dust. So they are “blacks.” At Mexico and many other places they are merely “browns.” In Egypt, where there is much golf, they are often made of rolled and baked Nile mud.

It is not necessary to say that there is nearly as much golf played in America as there is in Britain, and that the time may possibly come when there will be more. But it is not generally appreciated on what old-established foundations American golf is played. The game has traditions in America now, even as in Britain. In the archives of American golf there is still preserved a document which shows how little of a new thing is the game in the United States. It is an invitation, reading as follows: “Golf Club Ball.—The honour of Miss Eliza Johnston’s company is requested to a ball, to be given by the members of the golf club of this city, at the Exchange, on Tuesday evening, the 31st inst., at seven o’clock. (Signed) Geo. Woodruff, Robert Mackay, Jno. Caig, Jas. Dickson, Managers; Geo. Hogarth, Treasurer. Savannah, twentieth December 1811.” The original is in the possession of the granddaughter of the recipient. There seems to be some suggestion that these pioneers of American golf were of Scottish origin, as pioneers of the game until lately mostly were, and it might be appropriate to mention that Savannah, whose people are said to be celebrated for their love of pleasure, piety, and sport, has in it the oldest theatre in the United States, while it also claims to have started the first Sunday school in the world, founded by Wesley and perpetuated by Whitefield. If it started here, this was not a bad place for American golf to start at.

III

Rulers, statesmen, diplomatists, begin to take more serious account of the sport-loving factor in human nature than has been their wont. Downing Street, Washington, the Quai d’Orsay, and all the other nerve-centres of international affairs, where there are housed all the cleverest modern masters of opportunism, have entered upon the study of its peculiarities and tendencies, recognising that here is an instrument of the most delicate perfection for the cultivation of amity between people and people when the bureaucrats have set the lead. The British Empire is being soldered up with sport. Besides the constant visits of Colonial cricketers, have we not had with us recently two separate detachments of Colonial footballers, and has it not been evident that while the Colonial Governments have given their representatives