and that gate-money should be the real moving spirit and ideal of all county clubs. To be prosperous financially a county must win matches, to win matches you must get the best possible county eleven, therefore the best amateurs as well as professionals must be played; and if these amateurs cannot afford the time and the money to play, why, then, they must be paid, and paid accordingly they are. That this is the case now everybody knows, and it seems strange that the greatest game of the world should be the one game where such things occur. No complaint need be made of the Australian system, except in this, that players who are in fact professionals should be treated as such. We are always glad to give them every welcome and show them every hospitality; nevertheless, they should have the same treatment and stand on the same footing that our professionals do when they visit Australia. In the same way, if any player feels himself unable, at the invitation of the M.C.C., to go out to Australia, because he is only offered the payment of the actual cost of travelling and living, and afterwards goes out under some private arrangement, he should be treated and recognised as a professional. It is an old proverb that you cannot eat your cake and have it, and if the modern amateur does not care, on social grounds, to become a professional, then let him honestly refuse to play cricket if he cannot afford to play on receipt of his bare expenses only. Richard Daft, in old days, found himself in the same dilemma, and grasped the nettle
