🔥🔥🔥 Stanley Matthews In The Civil War

It seemed to stand for everything we believed in, everything we had left behind in England and Stanley Matthews In The Civil War to preserve. Grant was willing to incur high numbers of casualties with the knowledge that the North could replenish its armies, while the South could not. If you were covered he would do the same with your cover man and his cover man and so ad infinitum. Moved to Pulaski, Tenn. Bradley wrote the majority opinion stating that the Civil Stanley Matthews In The Civil War Act taxi to the dark side Stanley Matthews In The Civil War unconstitutional and that it was not protected by neither the 13th Stanley Matthews In The Civil War nor the 14th amendment. I felt Ewan Fenton's wet Stanley Matthews In The Civil War clammy arms across my Airedale Incident Analysis as his hands ruffled my hair. Stanley Matthews In The Civil War Standardized Testing A Bibliography.

Artifacts at The Confederate Memorial Hall Museum: War Department

Political scientist Barbara Walter suggests that most contemporary civil wars are actually repeats of earlier civil wars that often arise when leaders are not accountable to the public, when there is poor public participation in politics, and when there is a lack of transparency of information between the executives and the public. Walter argues that when these issues are properly reversed, they act as political and legal restraints on executive power forcing the established government to better serve the people. Additionally, these political and legal restraints create a standardized avenue to influence government and increase the commitment credibility of established peace treaties. High levels of population dispersion and, to a lesser extent, the presence of mountainous terrain, increased the chance of conflict.

Both of these factors favor rebels, as a population dispersed outward toward the borders is harder to control than one concentrated in a central region, while mountains offer terrain where rebels can seek sanctuary. The various factors contributing to the risk of civil war rise increase with population size. The risk of a civil war rises approximately proportionately with the size of a country's population. There is a correlation between poverty and civil war, but the causality which causes the other is unclear. Economists Simeon Djankov and Marta Reynal-Querol argue that the correlation is spurious, and that lower income and heightened conflict are instead products of other phenomena. The more time that has elapsed since the last civil war, the less likely it is that a conflict will recur.

The study had two possible explanations for this: one opportunity-based and the other grievance-based. The elapsed time may represent the depreciation of whatever capital the rebellion was fought over and thus increase the opportunity cost of restarting the conflict. Alternatively, elapsed time may represent the gradual process of healing of old hatreds. The study found that the presence of a diaspora substantially reduced the positive effect of time, as the funding from diasporas offsets the depreciation of rebellion-specific capital.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa has argued that an important cause of intergroup conflict may be the relative availability of women of reproductive age. He found that polygyny greatly increased the frequency of civil wars but not interstate wars. They argued that misogyny is a better explanation than polygyny. They found that increased women's rights were associated with fewer civil wars and that legal polygamy had no effect after women's rights were controlled for.

Through her studies of the Salvadoran Civil War , Wood finds that traditional explanations of greed and grievance are not sufficient to explain the emergence of that insurgent movement. Wood also attributes participation in the civil war to the value that insurgents assigned to changing social relations in El Salvador , an experience she defines as the "pleasure of agency". Ann Hironaka , author of Neverending Wars , divides the modern history of civil wars into the preth century, 19th century to early 20th century, and late 20th century. In 19th-century Europe, the length of civil wars fell significantly, largely due to the nature of the conflicts as battles for the power center of the state, the strength of centralized governments, and the normally quick and decisive intervention by other states to support the government.

Following World War II the duration of civil wars grew past the norm of the preth century, largely due to weakness of the many postcolonial states and the intervention by major powers on both sides of conflict. The most obvious commonality to civil wars are that they occur in fragile states. Civil wars in the 19th century and in the early 20th century tended to be short; civil wars between and lasted on average one and half years. This meant that whoever had control of the capital and the military could normally crush resistance. A rebellion which failed to quickly seize the capital and control of the military for itself normally found itself doomed to rapid destruction.

For example, the fighting associated with the Paris Commune occurred almost entirely in Paris , and ended quickly once the military sided with the government [32] at Versailles and conquered Paris. The power of non-state actors resulted in a lower value placed on sovereignty in the 18th and 19th centuries, which further reduced the number of civil wars. For example, the pirates of the Barbary Coast were recognized as de facto states because of their military power. The Barbary pirates thus had no need to rebel against the Ottoman Empire — their nominal state government — to gain recognition of their sovereignty.

Conversely, states such as Virginia and Massachusetts in the United States of America did not have sovereign status, but had significant political and economic independence coupled with weak federal control, reducing the incentive to secede. The two major global ideologies, monarchism and democracy , led to several civil wars. However, a bi-polar world, divided between the two ideologies, did not develop, largely due to the dominance of monarchists through most of the period.

The monarchists would thus normally intervene in other countries to stop democratic movements taking control and forming democratic governments, which were seen by monarchists as being both dangerous and unpredictable. The Great Powers defined in the Congress of Vienna as the United Kingdom , Habsburg Austria , Prussia , France , and Russia would frequently coordinate interventions in other nations' civil wars, nearly always on the side of the incumbent government.

Given the military strength of the Great Powers, these interventions nearly always proved decisive and quickly ended the civil wars. There were several exceptions from the general rule of quick civil wars during this period. The American Civil War — was unusual for at least two reasons: it was fought around regional identities as well as political ideologies, and it ended through a war of attrition , rather than with a decisive battle over control of the capital, as was the norm. The Spanish Civil War — proved exceptional because both sides in the struggle received support from intervening great powers: Germany , Italy , and Portugal supported opposition leader Francisco Franco , while France and the Soviet Union supported the government [35] see proxy war.

In the s, about twenty civil wars were occurring concurrently during an average year, a rate about ten times the historical average since the 19th century. However, the rate of new civil wars had not increased appreciably; the drastic rise in the number of ongoing wars after World War II was a result of the tripling of the average duration of civil wars to over four years. Following World War II, the major European powers divested themselves of their colonies at an increasing rate: the number of ex-colonial states jumped from about 30 to almost after the war. The rate of state formation leveled off in the s, at which point few colonies remained. While the new ex-colonial states appeared to follow the blueprint of the idealized state—centralized government, territory enclosed by defined borders, and citizenry with defined rights—as well as accessories such as a national flag, an anthem, a seat at the United Nations and an official economic policy, they were in actuality far weaker than the Western states they were modeled after.

The development of strong administrative structures, in particular those related to extraction of taxes, is closely associated with the intense warfare between predatory European states in the 17th and 18th centuries, or in Charles Tilly 's famous formulation: "War made the state and the state made war". Nevertheless, Western states that survived into the latter half of the 20th century were considered "strong" by simple reason that they had managed to develop the institutional structures and military capability required to survive predation by their fellow states. In sharp contrast, decolonization was an entirely different process of state formation. Most imperial powers had not foreseen a need to prepare their colonies for independence; for example, Britain had given limited self-rule to India and Sri Lanka , while treating British Somaliland as little more than a trading post, while all major decisions for French colonies were made in Paris and Belgium prohibited any self-government up until it suddenly granted independence to its colonies in Like Western states of previous centuries, the new ex-colonies lacked autonomous bureaucracies, which would make decisions based on the benefit to society as a whole, rather than respond to corruption and nepotism to favor a particular interest group.

In such a situation, factions manipulate the state to benefit themselves or, alternatively, state leaders use the bureaucracy to further their own self-interest. The lack of credible governance was compounded by the fact that most colonies were economic loss-makers at independence, lacking both a productive economic base and a taxation system to effectively extract resources from economic activity. Among the rare states profitable at decolonization was India, to which scholars credibly argue that Uganda , Malaysia and Angola may be included.

Neither did imperial powers make territorial integration a priority, and may have discouraged nascent nationalism as a danger to their rule. Many newly independent states thus found themselves impoverished, with minimal administrative capacity in a fragmented society, while faced with the expectation of immediately meeting the demands of a modern state. The "strong"-"weak" categorization is not the same as "Western"-"non-Western", as some Latin American states like Argentina and Brazil and Middle Eastern states like Egypt and Israel are considered to have "strong" administrative structures and economic infrastructure. Historically, the international community would have targeted weak states for territorial absorption or colonial domination or, alternatively, such states would fragment into pieces small enough to be effectively administered and secured by a local power.

However, international norms towards sovereignty changed in the wake of World War II in ways that support and maintain the existence of weak states. Weak states are given de jure sovereignty equal to that of other states, even when they do not have de facto sovereignty or control of their own territory, including the privileges of international diplomatic recognition and an equal vote in the United Nations. Further, the international community offers development aid to weak states, which helps maintain the facade of a functioning modern state by giving the appearance that the state is capable of fulfilling its implied responsibilities of control and order.

Consequently, military aggression that results in territorial annexation became increasingly likely to prompt international condemnation, diplomatic censure, a reduction in international aid or the introduction of economic sanction, or, as in the case of invasion of Kuwait by Iraq , international military intervention to reverse the territorial aggression. There has been an enormous amount of international intervention in civil wars since that some have argued served to extend wars.

It became common for both the state and opposition group to receive foreign support, allowing wars to continue well past the point when domestic resources had been exhausted. Superpowers, such as the European great powers , had always felt no compunction in intervening in civil wars that affected their interests, while distant regional powers such as the United States could declare the interventionist Monroe Doctrine of for events in its Central American "backyard". However, the large population of weak states after allowed intervention by former colonial powers, regional powers and neighboring states who themselves often had scarce resources.

The effectiveness of intervention is widely debated, in part because the data suffers from selection bias; as Fortna has argued, peacekeepers select themselves into difficult cases. However, other scholars disagree. Knaus and Stewart are extremely skeptical as to the effectiveness of interventions, holding that they can only work when they are performed with extreme caution and sensitivity to context, a strategy they label 'principled incrementalism'.

Few interventions, for them, have demonstrated such an approach. The Cold War — provided a global network of material and ideological support that often helped perpetuate civil wars, which were mainly fought in weak ex-colonial states rather than the relatively strong states that were aligned with the Warsaw Pact and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In some cases, superpowers would superimpose Cold War ideology onto local conflicts, while in others local actors using Cold War ideology would attract the attention of a superpower to obtain support. Lengthy Cold War-associated civil conflicts that ground to a halt include the wars of Guatemala — , El Salvador — and Nicaragua — According to Barbara F. Walter, "post civil wars are different from previous civil wars in three striking ways.

First, most of them are situated in Muslim-majority countries. Second, most of the rebel groups fighting these wars espouse radical Islamist ideas and goals. Third, most of these radical groups are pursuing transnational rather than national aims. It also has a regional effect, reducing the GDP growth of neighboring countries. Civil wars also have the potential to lock the country in a conflict trap , where each conflict increases the likelihood of future conflict.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. War between organized groups within the same state or country. For specific wars and other uses, see Civil War disambiguation and List of civil wars. For the college football game, see Civil Conflict. The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a full view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

May Prehistoric Ancient Post-classical Early modern Late modern industrial fourth-gen. Grand strategy. Military recruitment Conscription Recruit training Military specialism Women in the military Children in the military Transgender people and military service Sexual harassment in the military Conscientious objector Counter-recruitment. Military—industrial complex Arms industry Materiel Supply-chain management. Power projection Loss of Strength Gradient.

Court-martial Justice Perfidy Martial law War crime. Air supremacy Full-spectrum dominance Just war theory Overmatch. Government and Opposition. We had no referee or linesman, yet sometimes up to 40 boys would play football for two hours adhering to the rules as we knew them. When there was a foul, there would be a free kick. When a goal was scored, the ball would be returned to the centre of the waste ground for the game to restart. We didn't need a referee; we accepted the rules of the game and stuck by them. For us not to have done so, would have spoilt the game for everyone. It taught us that you can't go about doing what you want because there are others to think of and if you don't stick to the rules, you spoil it for everyone else.

Of course, that was not a conscious thought at the time, but looking back, those kickabout games on the waste ground did prepare us for life. I thought my father had also been understanding in saying I could carry on with football if I made the England schoolboy team, even though it was a pretty tall order. I was of the mind that to be picked for England Schoolboys was something that happened to other boys, not me. I felt I was making good progress. I often played at centre-half for my school and in one game scored eight in a victory. I realised what a feat this was when my headmaster, Mr Terry, said how pleased he was with the way I had played and gave me sixpence. The youngest ever professional player? It was around this time that another teacher at the school, Mr Slack, picked me at outside-right for the school team.

I felt comfortable in the position; it provided more scope for my dribbling skills but I still thought centre-half was my calling. I must have been doing something right on the wing for later that year, I was selected to play for the North against the South in an England Schoolboy trial. Even to this day, the lads picked for England Schoolboys tend to be the ones who have physically matured quicker than others. I was only 13, so in the physical stakes I was quite some way behind lads of 14 and I felt I did all right in the trial, nothing exceptional, but the selectors must have seen something because three weeks later, I played for England Boys against The Rest at Kettering Town's ground. I never heard another thing for months and was beginning to come to terms with the fact that at 13 I was probably a bit too young to get into the England Schoolboys team.

I consoled myself with the thought that there would always be next season. I never stopped hoping, though, and I never stopped practising. I was doing so in splendid isolation, never realising that not every boy was getting up at the crack of dawn like me, going through a rigorous physical workout of sprints and shuttles and honing ball skills at every given opportunity. Such was my determination to master the ball and make it do whatever I wanted it to do. A few months after the trial at Kettering, I was told to report to the headmaster's office. Such a call was about as bad as it could be. To be asked to report to the headmaster was a sure-fire way to immediate anxiety and guilt - a bit like your own mother saying, "Guess what I found in your bedroom this morning.

As I made my way to Mr Terry's office, I ran through all my recent escapades but couldn't come up with anything I d done that merited seeing the headmaster. On entering the office my stomach was churning. He indicated I should stand before his desk and then said, "Well, Matthews, let me congratulate you. You have been picked to play for England Schoolboys against Wales at Bournemouth's ground in three weeks' time.

What do you think about that? I felt like saying, "Sorry sir, could you repeat that. I didn't hear you because of the sound of angels singing. I just stood there dumbfounded. I could feel my face twitching, my mouth went dry and the shock made me sense I was about to embarrass myself with a bodily function. I tried to speak but the words wouldn't come.

Instead, out of my mouth came the sort of noise a small frog with adenoid trouble would make - if frogs had adenoids, that is. Meeting my fellow team-mates for the first time had the same effect. Some of the boys seemed to know one another. I thought at the time this was probably down to the fact that they had played in previous schoolboy internationals or area representative games together. I was the only lad from Stoke-on-Trent. I didn't know anybody, no one knew me. It was the first time I had ever been in a hotel. A number of the other players seemed to know how to go on, but I simply hadn't a clue and was full of anxiety in case I made a dreadful faux pas.

I had never been waited on at a table before and this made me feel awkward. I over-emphasised my thanks to everyone who placed a plate before me or took a bowl away, such was my embarrassment at having adults seemingly at my beck and call, not that I ever dared beckon or call anyone. All of my team-mates were older than me. Although this was only a matter of a year, they all appeared so much more mature and worldly wise than me, as if they had done it all before, which several of them had. I'd always had confidence in my own ability but as I sheepishly hung on the perimeter of the social life at the hotel, I did wonder if I was going to be up to the mark.

Would I cover myself in glory, or, having teamed up with those who were considered the best school-boy footballers in England and been pitted against the best Wales had to offer, find to my horror I was totally lacking? Would it be a case of being a big fish in a small pond in Stoke, but a floundering minnow when set alongside the cream of my contemporaries? This and my natural shyness made for a very quiet, passive and unassuming schoolboy international debutant in the build-up to the game. When I ran down the tunnel for the first time in an England shirt, I was bursting with pride. The first sensation as the team emerged into the light was the noise of the supporters who had packed into the Dean Court ground.

There must have been nigh on 20, there, which was far and away the largest crowd I had ever played in front of. I took a look around and the sight of so many people made me catch my breath. My heart was doing a passable impression of a kettledrum being played at full tempo, and as I ran around the soft turf, it was as if my boots would sink into it and never come unstuck. It was a terrific feeling, though. There and then, I knew that there couldn't be anything but a football career for me. It was one hell of a buzz and I felt so elated it was all I could do to stop myself shouting and screaming to release the excitement and emotion as I ran about in the warm-up. I got an early touch of the ball from the kick-off and that settled me down. I started to enjoy the game and must admit I felt totally at home at outside-right.

It was as if I had been born to it. We won and, although disappointed that I didn't get on the scoresheet, I was happy enough with my overall contribution, having been involved in the build-up to a couple of our goals. I had made a point of saying to my parents that I didn't want them to watch the game, partly because I thought it would unnerve me and partly because, with four sons to bring up, I knew they were on a tight budget and a trip to Bournemouth would have made quite a hole in my dad's weekly wage at the barber's shop. However, as I came off the field I felt sorry they weren't there. After all, you only make your debut for your country once.

In the dressing-room after the game, I was in the process of putting my boots into my bag when one of the officials came up and said there was someone outside the ground who would like a word with me. I made my way to the players' entrance and there was my father in his belted overcoat, clutching a brown paper bag in which he had his sandwich tin. I've seen you play better and I've seen you play worse," he said.

So let's have some tea, then we'll go home. We walked in near silence towards a nearby cafe and I fought to hold back my tears. He may well have had only the price of two cups of tea in his pocket, but he was walking proudly with his head held high. When I ran out on to Gigg Lane with the rest of the Stoke team, I was as excited as I had been on my schoolboy international debut, perhaps more so. I noticed there was a cemetery backing on to one end of the ground and just hoped it wasn't an omen - the football career of Stanley Matthews was born and died here!

Within minutes of the kick-off I realised that first-team football was, quite literally, a totally different ball game. Arms were flaying when players came into close contact. Shirts were held. When I tried to get near an opponent with the ball, his arm would shoot out to keep me at bay. When standing alongside my opposite number and the ball came our way, he'd whack an arm across my chest to push me back and to lever himself forward. Whenever I saw a Bury player making progress with the ball and cut across to challenge him, one of his team-mates would run and block my way to allow him to progress. When a high ball came my way, I found I couldn't get off the ground to head it because the player marking me stood on my foot as he jumped to meet the ball with his head.

Not once did the referee blow up for any of this. It was my first lesson that in professional football, such things are all part and parcel of the game. You have to accept them otherwise you just wither away. I was soon to learn that the best way of combating all this was to improve my individual skills and technique, to make it harder for my opponent to get near me and the ball. I toiled away, learning from my mistakes. The game got under way and from the very first tackles, I was left in no doubt that this was going to be a rough house of a game.

I wasn't wrong. After a challenge between Drake and Monti, the Italian had to leave the pitch with a broken foot after only two minutes. This only made matters worse. For the first quarter of an hour there might just as well have not been a ball on the pitch as far as the Italians were concerned. They were like men possessed, kicking anything and everything that moved bar the referee. The game degenerated into nothing short of a brawl and it disgusted me Ted Drake latched on to an ale-house long ball out of defence and broke away to score a wonderful individual goal on his international debut. He paid for it. Minutes after the game re-started I watched in sadness as Ted was carried from the field, tears in his eyes, his left sock torn apart to reveal a gushing wound.

I thought the three quick goals would calm the Italians down, showing them that rough-house play didn't pay dividends, but they got worse. I felt it was a great shame they had adopted such tactics because individually they were very talented players with terrific on-the-ball skills. They didn't have to resort to rough-house play to win games. Why they had done so this day was beyond me. Not long after Eric Brook had put us two up, Bertolini hit Eddie Hapgood a savage blow in the face with his elbow as he walked past him.

Eddie fell like a Wall Street price in The next few minutes were dreadful. Tempers flared on both sides, there was a lot of pushing and jostling and punches were exchanged. I abhor such behaviour on the field and when I saw Eddie Hapgood being led off with blood streaming down his face from a broken nose, it sickened me. I'd been really keyed up and looking forward to showing what I could do on the big international scene, but this game was turning into a nightmare. The game got under way again and the Italians continued where they had left off. It got to a few of our players and I don't mind saying it affected me. Fortunately, we had two real hard nuts in the England side that day in Eric Brook and Wilf Copping who started to dish out as good as they got and more.

Wilf was an iron man of a half-back, a Geordie who didn't shave for three days preceding a game because he felt it made him look mean and hard. It did and he was. Eric Brook received a nasty shoulder injury and continued to play manfully with his shoulder strapped up. He was in obvious pain but he just carried on, seemingly ignoring it. Monti went up in the air like a rocket and down like a bag of hammers and had to leave the field with a splintered bone in his foot.

Italy were starting to get the upper hand and laid siege to our goal. It was desperate stuff. Our dressing room at half-time resembled a field hospital. We were up but had paid a bruising price. No one had failed to pick up an injury of one sort of another. The language and comments coming from my England team-mates made my hair stand on end. I was still only 19 but came to the conclusion I'd been leading a sheltered life. I was relieved when our team trainer came into the dressing room, calmed everyone down and said that under no circumstances were we to copy the Italian tactics.

We were to go out, he said, and play the way every English team had been taught to play. To do anything but, he said, would exacerbate the situation. Exacerbate the situation? It was already a bloodbath. The game against Germany took on a significance far beyond football. The Nazi propaganda machine saw it as an opportunity to display Third Reich superiority and played up that disconcerting theme big style in the German newspapers. The German team had spent ten days preparing for the game at a special training centre in the Black Forest, whereas after a long and tiresome train journey, we had less than two days to prepare for what we knew was going to be a game of truly epic proportions, a game which to this day is looked upon as the most infamous game England have ever been involved in and all due to one incident.

After all this time, and once and for all, I would like to set the record straight about that incident. As the players were getting changed, an FA official came into our dressing room and informed us that when our national anthem was played, the German team would salute as a mark of respect. The FA wanted us to reciprocate by giving the raised arm Nazi salute during the playing of the German national anthem. The dressing room erupted. In fact, Eddie went so far as to offer a compromise, saying we would stand to attention military style but the offer fell on deaf ears. I sat there crestfallen, thinking what on earth my family and the people back home would think if they saw me and the rest of the England team paying lip service, so to speak, to the Nazi regime and its leaders.

We were told that the political situation between Great Britain and Germany was now so sensitive that it needed "only a spark to set Europe alight". Faced with the knowledge of the direst consequences, we felt we had little choice in the matter and reluctantly agreed to the request. However, the game was different. We knew we had it in our power to do something about the match itself and to a man we took the field determined to do so.

All of , people were crammed into the Olympic Stadium, including Goering and Goebbels, and they roared their approval as the German team took the field. If ever men in the cause of sport felt isolated and so very far from their homes, it was the England team that day in Berlin. The Olympic Stadium was draped in red, black and white swastikas with a large portrait of Hitler above the stand where the Nazi leaders and dignitaries sat. It seemed every supporter on the massed terraces had a smaller version of the swastika and they held them aloft in a silent show of collective defiance as the England team ran out. During the pre-match kick-in, I went behind our goal to retrieve a wayward ball and an amazing thing happened.

As I curled my foot around the ball to steer it back towards the pitch, two lone voices called out, "Let them have it, Stan. Come on England! I scanned the sea of faces and the hundreds of swastikas before I saw the most uplifting sight I have ever seen at a football ground. There, right at the front of the terracing, were two Englishmen who had draped a small Union Jack over the perimeter fencing in front of them. Whether they were civil servants from the British Embassy, on holiday or what I don't know, but the brave and uplifting words of those two solitary English supporters among , Nazis had a profound effect on me and the rest of the England team that day.

When I got back on to the pitch I pointed out the two supporters to our captain Eddie Hapgood and the word spread throughout the team. We all looked across to these two doughty men, who responded by raising the thumbs of their right hands in encouragement. As a team we were immediately galvanised, determined and uplifted by the courage of these two supporters and their small Union Jack Up to that point, I had never given much thought to our national flag. That afternoon however, small as that particular version was, it took on the greatest of symbolism for me and my England team-mates. It seemed to stand for everything we believed in, everything we had left behind in England and wanted to preserve. Above all, it reminded me that we were not after all alone.

The photograph of the England team giving the Nazi salute appeared in newspapers throughout the world the next day to the eternal shame of every player and Britain as a whole. But look closely at the photograph and you will see the German team looking straight ahead but the England players looking off to their left. I can tell you that all our eyes were fixed upon that Union Jack from which we were drawing the inspiration that would carry us to a fantastic and memorable victory. The story starts in That year England competed in the Berlin Olympic Games, held in the fabulous stadium, built for the sole purpose of impressing the world with Nazi might-hundreds of millions of marks were spent, not only in the building, but in propaganda to put over the Games.

Stanley Rous, the Football Association secretary, went over in charge of the English amateur side, which competed in the soccer tournament. Early on, the question of the salute to be given Hitler at the march-past was causing some anxiety. After most of the other countries had decided on the Olympic salute which is given with the right arm flung sideways, not forward and upward like the Nazi salute , it was arranged that the English athletes should give only the 'eyes right. Rous told me afterwards that, to Hitler, and the crowd stepped up in masses round him, the turning of the head by the English team probably passed unnoticed after the outflung arms of the other athletes.

So much so that the crowd booed our lads, among them Arsenal colleague, Bernard Joy, and everyone seemed highly offended. When it was our turn to come into the limelight two years later over the same vexed question of the salute, Mr. Wreford Brown, the member in charge of the England team and Mr. Rous reminded Sir Nevile of his previous experience and suggested, as an act of courtesy, but what was more important, in order to get the crowd in a good temper, the team should give the salute of Germany before the start. Sir Nevile, vastly relieved at the readiness of the F. Wreford Brown and Mr. Rous came back from the Embassy, called me in I was captain and explained what they thought the team should do.

I replied, "We are of the British Empire and I do not see any reason why we should give the Nazi salute; they should understand that we always stand to attention for every National Anthem. We have never done it before-we have always stood to attention, but we will do everything to beat them fairly and squarely. There was much muttering in the ranks. When we were all together a few hours before the game, Mr. Wreford Brown informed the lads what I had already passed on. He added that as there were undercurrents of which we knew nothing, and it was virtually out of his hands and a matter for the politicians rather than the sportsmen, it had been agreed that to give the salute was the wisest course.

Privately he told us that he and Mr. Rous felt as sick as we did, but that, under the circumstances, it was the correct thing to do. Well, that was that, and we were all pretty miserable about it. Personally, I felt a fool heiling Hitler, but Mr. Rous's diplomacy worked, for we went out determined to beat the Germans. And after our salute had been received with tremendous enthusiasm, we settled down to do just that. The only humorous thing about the whole affair was that while we gave the salute only one way, the German team gave it to the four corners of the ground.

The sequel came at the dinner in the evening after the game, given by the Reich Association of Physical Exercises, when, with everybody in high good humour, Sir Nevile Henderson whispered to Mr. Rous, " You and the players proved yourselves to be good Ambassadors after all! Many people have told me that Matthews is slow, but don't be misled by old Shuffling Stan, as we call him. This Prince among wingers looks unconcerned about anything, but watch him when he is showing the ball to an opponent, as if he is counting the panels. Then watch that tremendous burst of speed that takes him clear of everyone. Other people accuse him of being a bad team man, the sort of player who holds up the forward line and allows the defence to get into position.

What utter nonsense. Stanley Matthews is a perfectionist, and when he gets the ball he refuses to pass it just for the sake of passing it. He wants his colleagues to move into position, to get away from opponents into the right position for the pass that will bring a goal. If no one moves, Stan will hold the ball until everyone is in position. And no one can hold a ball like Stan. He has uncanny control, and looks quite happy when three or four men are around him. How does he do it?

Here are some of the secrets of Stanlev Matthews as I have seen him: Perfect fitness and faithful attention not only to fitness but to playing gear. Superb balance. Complete confidence in his own ability. Tremendous pace over a distance of up to twenty-five yards, but especially over twelve yards, the distance that really matters in football. A beautiful body swerve. Mastery of the ball. He can "kill" it stone dead from all angles and paces. Complete two-footedness. He doesn't mind which foot he has to centre with. Ideal temperament and self-control. Like all players of this type, he has had to undergo some pretty stiff tackling and fouling, especially from Continental sides.

But he never gets rattled, never retaliates although his father was a professional boxer, and Stan might be expected to be useful with his hands! In short, the ideal poker player - on the football field. The England changing room was situated right at the very top of the main stand which meant, after a walk down a tunnel that made Wembley's seem like the lobby of a terraced house, we had to climb about 90 concrete steps before reaching it.

We took to that walk as if we were a group of high-spirited lads making our way to the local pub for a night out. We were all in a buoyant and excited mood, but the best was yet to come in the form of what was probably the greatest goal I ever saw in football, courtesy of Len Goulden. We came out of defence with a series of one-touch passes that left the Germans chasing shadows before the ball was finally played out to me on the right. I took off towards Munzenberg, by now run ragged. Such was my confidence that as I ran towards him, I criss-crossed my legs over the ball as I ran and, on reaching him, swept the ball past him with the outside of my right boot and followed it.

I could hear Munzenberg and the German left-half panting behind me. I glanced across and saw Len Goulden steaming in just left of the centre of midfield, some 35 yards from goal. I arced around the ball in order to get some power behind the cross and picked my spot just ahead of Len. He met the ball at around knee height. My initial thought was that he'd control it and take it on to get nearer the German goal, but he didn't.

Len met the ball on the run; without surrendering any pace, his left leg cocked back like the trigger of a gun, snapped forward and he met the ball full face on the volley. The terraces of the packed Olympic Stadium were as lifeless as a string of dead fish. We'd been given little chance, but when the final whistle sounded, the scoreline of Germany 3 England 6 told its own story. It was perhaps the finest England performance I was ever involved in. Every player was at the top of his game, to a man we played out of our skins and Len Goulden's goal will live forever in the memory. If there had been televised football in those days, Len's goal would never have been off the screens. It was truly marvellous. Joe Smith, the manager, was never very tactical, he was very blunt with his instructions - "Go out there and get them beat," that kind of thing.

You can't tell good players like Matthews and Mortensen what to do. We lined up to go on to the field, very quiet. Then as soon as we walk on to the pitch, the roar, it sent shivers down your spine. We line up and are introduced to Prince Philip. We're thinking, let's just get on with the game. We kicked off and within a couple of minutes we had a goal scored against us. Then just after half-time they scored again, Bolton took a second minute cad when Nat Lofthouse took a pass from Holden and shot from 25 yards. Farm allowed it to slip through his hands into the net.

Bolton began to take control, but suffered a blow when Bell went down injured with a pulled muscle. His team mates reshuffled and Bell was moved out to the wing. With ten minutes to go before half-time Blackpool drew level. Hassall, who had dropped back to defence, deflected a Stan Mortensen shot past Hanson. But within five minutes Bolton had regained the lead. Blackpool's world fell apart in the tenth minute of the second half when injured Eric Bell, of all people, rose to head in Holden's centre. Blackpool were down, and no team had ever lost a two-goal Iead in all FA Cup final.

It looked hopeless then, I was thinking to myself at least I've been to Wembley. But Morty scored from a Matthews cross to put us back in it and then he equalised direct from a free-kick - I've never seen one taken as well. A few minutes from the end I turned to Jackie Mudie and said: "We'll win this in extra-time. A minute of injury time remained. What happened then no scriptwriter could have penned because no editor would have accepted a story so far-fetched and outlandish. Don't blast it! I was doing Bill an injustice.

The "Original Champagne Perry" was as ice cool as the finest vintage in the coldest of buckets. He coolly and calmly stroked the ball wide of Hanson and Johnny Ball on the goalline and into the corner of the net. From down it was now ! Those in the seats took to their feet, those on the terraces and already standing, leapt into the air as Wembley erupted. Perhaps it was down to the fact I swallowed hard to get some saliva into my dry mouth, or that the sudden eruption of sound was momentarily too much for my eardrums; maybe it was a combination of the two. For a brief moment, although conscious of the pandemonium that had broken out about me, I didn't hear a thing.

I watched the ball hit the back of the net, looked back at Bill as he raised his arms and was for a split second rendered totally deaf. I looked at my team-mates jumping for joy and the only noise was a low, droning buzz in my ears. It was as if I was dreaming it.