War & Athlete-power

The San Francisco Chronicle's hard-hitting sport editor, Bill Leiser, landed a shrewd blow last week in defense of wartime pro sport. In his column, "As Bill Leiser Sees It," he wrote:

"The biggest fake quasi-officially presented to the American people today is the suggestion that Mr. Acting President James Byrnes is 'studying' the question of sports to determine if it will be necessary to close the professional games in order to solve the manpower problem. . . .

"Mr. Byrnes could gain more manpower by closing the bars in the single city of New York at 9 o'clock each night than he could gain by closure of all professional sports in America. . . . There could be no point in asking for the few thousands of men in sports and ignoring the hundreds of thousands in other entertainments unless the whole business were a fake and sports were being used as the whipping boy."

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