The Armory in NY City was putting on a race. It was a mile. In the race was Alan Webb, his training partner, and a couple of foreign runners. Coaches like Gags tried to get some milers in the race to get a qualifying time and to get some good competition. The race director refused to let them in." WHY?" asked the coach. " I really can't talk about it.", was the best reply that the race director could come up with. The race goes off as planned, except that Webb got third. He did qualify for nationals.
Now we get to the lobby of the meet hotel at Boston. The "rumblings" going around was that if the 1500 went out too slowly, Lunn and Webb had the only qualifying time for Worlds. How could this be? Webb didn't run a 1500m and the world meet does not recognise mile times, only 1500m marks. The ANSWER, the race director in NY put a clock at the 1500m to give Webb a time. That is why no Americans were allowed in the race.
By the time everyone running the 1500m in Boston heard this, it turned into a race of Everyone VS. Webb.
Everyone won.