A contest in itself is almost an absorbing spectacle. Games, better than anything else, provide us with contests. Here are bloodless battles – dogfights out of which both the dogs emerge exhausted but cheerful. Here is all the keenness of rivalry without its murderous malevolence. Man, it appears, can understand nothing save by comparison. He can understand strength only by comparing one man’s strength with another’s and speed only by comparing one horse’s speed with another’s. Hence, his passionate interest in every sort of game - in which strong men are pitted against each other, or in any fine physical equality - is seen in its relative perfection. As we read history, it reveals itself as an account of tens of thousands of championships won or lost.

The contest has always been there – be it a contest between rival men, or a contest between rival nations. A public man’s biography is largely the biography of his chief enemy. Here he seems to have lived most keenly, where he had to struggle most desperately for victory. Over some time his worst moments get transformed into his best memories. Here, out of the overflow of his keenness, some keenness seems to pour into our being as we read, and our sleepy attention is awakened as though by a struggle of our times. No doubt, there are other important things in life besides conflict, but there are not many other things so inevitably interesting.