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Title
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The Remise
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Date
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October 1940
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volume
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5
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issue
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5
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pages
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7-8, 10
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content
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en
The Remise
Our home telephone rang long and loud on August 30th, an evening in which the A.F.L.A. Rules Committee was up to its ears in another of its night-long sessions. I returned very late to learn that a most excited “Chips” Cantor, known only to a very few people as Irving E. Cantor, had called to announce that he had just become the proud father of twin boys. Chips is one of our better sabre men, being ranked #5 in 1937-1938, and although almost unintelligible at the time did want it known that two more sabremen were due to start training in a few years.
The news pleased us a great deal not only because Chips and Elizabeth have always been popular with all of the fencers but also because the new responsibility may possibly see Chips return to more active fencing than in the past two seasons. After all, he does have to keep ahead of his boys.
The Riposte artist presents a sketch of the present situation in the Cantor home with the two future members of the Fencers Club already showing their Dad a thing or two.
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Tracy Jaeckel, another of our ranking fencers (he was #6 in epee last year), has been touched. His engagement to Joehann Randlow was announced in many New York society columns on September 18th. The popular Tracy fenced very little this last season, giving as an excuse the great amount of work necessary in moving the minks and sables to the new Jaeckels on upper Fifth Avenue. The sly Tracy was a ‘courtin’ instead.
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Fencers whose association with the sport extends beyond the last decade were shocked to read on September 22nd of the death of Major Francis Honeycutt, U.S.A., in an airplane disaster between Fort Bragg, N.C. and Jacksonville, Fla. Major Honeycutt was one of America’s leading foilsmen in the early 20’s and was a member of the 1920 American Olympic Fencing Team.
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For the past two seasons, word has passed around that the A.F.L.A. was preparing a new Rulesbook. For the last year, the old Rulesbook has been out of print and requests for it have been met only by promises of the new book, when available. That hasn’t been a very satisfying answer to a person in need of a book of rules, but under the circumstances it was the best that the A.F.L.A. Secretary could do.
No Foolin’. The new book is now at the printers. It will be a whopper, and well worth the wait.
The new Rulesbook will, in our opinion, prove to be the most accurate, readable, complete, up-to-date, authoritative book of its kind ever published anywhere. Its approximately 120 pages will present the advanced opinions of the F.I.E., the A.F.L.A., the I.C.F.A., and the N.C.C.A.A. Rules Committees. Proofs have been submitted to at least 50 of America’s leading fencers, amateurs and professionals alike, and the results are a composite opinion of fencing today, an opinion that has proved surprisingly consistent despite the fact that fencers usually tend to disagree on many of the finer points of the sport.
The new Rulesbook is more than just a book of rules. It will have many new and added features including a historical sketch of the A.F.L.A., the Constitution and By-Laws of the League, a new section on rules concerning amateurism, another new section pertaining to exhibitions, new material concerning National and Sectional Championships, the Duties of Contestants, the Rules of Discipline, the Rules of Judging and a most valuable chapter containing a clear Definition of Fencing Terms. This is a book that no fencer, amateur or professional, can afford not to have in his library.
If you are a member of the A.F.L.A., you will receive a copy of this new Rulesbook as soon as it leaves the printer. If not a member, you would be doing yourself a service in sending Dr. Ervin Acel, Secretary of the A.F.L.A., 25 Beaver Street, New York City, fifty cents at once with the request that he place an order for you for a copy as soon as possible.
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The major part of the work on the preparation of the new Rulesbook was carried out by the A.F.L.A. Rules Committee. Many meetings, lasting long into the early morning hours, were held as suggestions for changes, clarifications and amplifications were reviewed. This, however, was work which was concentrated into the last six months, after a year and a half had already been spent in the preparation of the original “copy.” The primary work, the hardest of all, which entailed comparisons of all former Rulesbooks, translation of F.I.E. Rulesbooks, incorporation of new A.F.L.A. rules and rules of usage, systematizing of presentation as new features were incorporated, and the preparation of reams of typewritten pages to make up the first draft, fell upon one man, Mike de Capriles, Chairman of the Rules Committee. He faced this as a necessary but thankless task. He spent hours, days and weeks at preparing a first draft which he knew would be cut, chopped, rehashed and even possibly destroyed. Nevertheless, he kept at his job, snooping through the books and files of the A.F.L.A., through all of the evidence available in order to present to his Committee the latest clues and ideas he could find for its help in the task ahead. We don’t think that this should remain a thankless task. We feel that the Rules Committee, the Board of Governors, the League and fencers everywhere are indebted to him for a piece of work that deserves considerable credit. We, therefore, wish to thank him personally in these columns for the endless hours of painstaking effort that we know he expended for the good of the sport.
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We have rarely gone out of our way to heap coals of fire on this one or pour encomiums upon that one for something that has occurred within the sport. We have preferred to follow a middle course of damning with faint praise or praising with faint damns. Nevertheless, an occasion does arise now and then where the middle course is not adequate. This happens to be one of them. We have already praised Mike for his work. As Chairman, it was part of his duty to do what he did. That he did it so well was the good fortune of the League. Any other Chairman might have worked just as hard and we hope might have done as well. What we do want to praise in him is the way in which he carried it through.
Whenever a man works at a task as long as Mike worked at this one, that task becomes pretty much a personal property. You work with it, think about it, have it in mind during all of your waking and sleeping hours. It becomes your brainchild, subject to the help and criticism of others but never entirely sacrificed to the whims of others than yourself. To be able to sit by while other scalp, hack and amputate your brainchild, in fact to enter into the mutilation yourself with enthusiasm requires an unselfishness and broadmindedness that few men possess. Mike de Capriles has it.
As a member of his Committee, we sat in upon many of the meetings which would have tortured any normal author into agony. We marveled at his ability to hear suggestions and then, after submitting his source or authority for the original, gladly make changes in words, phrases, sentences or paragraphs that the Committee felt would read better another way. Every suggestion was given a fair hearing and everyone concerned was pressed by the Chairman for any and every suggestion that would in any way make the Rulesbook a better job. As a consequence, you will find the new Rulesbook an unusually good job, thanks to a hard working Chairman who never let his own work or any of the cooperating Committees down.
While we are throwing bouquets we might just as well complete the job. Mike is the newly elected Secretary of the New York Metropolitan Committee, a job which ranks second only to that of the National Secretary in number of duties and amount of work. He had already been elected Vice Chairman of that Committee, a position which exceeded that of Secretary in honorary standing, when difficulty arose in finding a man willing and able to accept the Secretaryship. Matters were pretty much at a standstill until Mike resigned as Vice Chairman and accepted the nomination and unanimous vote as Secretary. The Rulesbook is on the press and Mike deserves a rest, but at this writing he is again burning the midnight oil to get the Schedule of New York Competitions mailed to some 300 fencers who hardly realize the work necessary to keep their sport rolling for them.
