-L-500

A report came from Australia that James O. Anderson will play no more international tennis. The Captain of the Australian Davis Cup team of 1923, and its most able player asked for -L-500 or retirement--and did not get -L-500. As told by the Sydney Referee, the story is as follows: "The trouble is really a recrudescence of that which arose just before the Davis cup team left for America. First Anderson said he would go. Then he laid down conditions which the Australasian Association found it could not accede to. Then Anderson forewent those conditions and at the last moment refused to accept a public subscription that was being raised. He sailed for America with the team, taking his wife with him. He returns after having played splendidly for Australia and every Australian would wish to give him everything possible to enable him to keep in the game at no loss to himself. On his return he asks from the association -L-500 for losses in business and otherwise owing to his absence in America." Under the amateur rules it was of course, impossible to grant Anderson's request, although the Association would doubtless have been glad enough to do so. Unless he changes his mind, the Australian Davis Cup Team will lose the man who last September brilliantly defeated William M. Johnson, and gave Tilden a run for his money.