Full Respectability for Sport.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18659, 7 April 1926, Page 8

Full Respectability for Sport.

It is s pity that /the 'Frisco mail which reached Christchurch last Thursday did not reach us the Thursday before. If. it had arrived even three days earlier it might have made a profound difference to many of those who have sinee been to Addington and Riccarton, and; some difference even to those' who haye been playing tennis and golf. Let us quote from" a highly respectable periodical: ■-,

- Sport has.achieved full respectability at last. Starting as the despised pastime of village ne'er-do-wells, it has overcome the opposition of the public and the law, and finally threatens to be incorporated into tho very heart of the Churoh. > -'■■.'

In brief, the amateur sportsmen of America have offered, and the authorities apparently are going to accept, a Sports Bay in the magnificent Cathedral of St. John the Divine now, under New York City. If we are right, in supposing that the offer will be accepted, visitors to the Cathedral, will one day, and before very long, look up at a stained glass window thirty feet high on which not merely cricket but racing, not merely tennis and baseball, but boxing, steepleohasing, trap-shooting, and billiards, as well as about twenty other " clean, wholesome, and well-regulated " games, will be literally and yet piously portrayed. In a recent address to the National Collegiate Athletic Association the Bishop of the Cathedral called the proposed Bay one of the "visible, " striking, and significant symbols " of the already established contact of the Cathedral with the life.of the community, and then, warming a little- at the thought, so far forgot the Puritans, precedents, and traditions, a3 to say that a " well-played game of polo, "or of football, is in its own place "and in its own way as pleasing to " God as a beautiful service of worship "in the Cathedral." A photographic reproduction of the submitted design shows a rose, which .the letter-press says is seven feet by seven feet, surmounting two panels each eighteen feet by six feet, the rose representing an angel crowning an athlete with laurel, and the panels containing each four circles and nine semi-circles dedicated to the nation's most popular games. Horse-racing, we are bound to confess, heads the-right-hand panel, so that in America in future it will be possible to go to the races not merely without a thought about brimstone, but with something like apostolic fervour.