The Hours of Play

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 126, 25 February 1928, Page 17

The Hours of Play

A True Test of Character

WHICH is the greater test of character—work or play? This question is fearlessly answered by a leader in the “Church Times,” which, after the above, states: — “The visitor to. a factory will see, perhaps, hun-

dreds of men and women doing their appointed jobs. In a counting-house he will find rows and rows of clerks bending over their ledgers. There will seem little difference between one of those human calculating machines and the next, between one of those factory girls and the neighbour who works beside her. For the time being they are under restraint, and individuality is repressed.

“Some may find the task congenial and others not, yet each has to do the prescribed thing in the prescribed way for the sake of earning breach and butter. That is work. And work, in its modern and highly organised forms, reveals little of character.

“But play shows it speedily. When the shutters are up the rows of men and women that seemed so alike in the office or factory will prove how immensely various they really are by their choice of recreations. To find out how a worker spends his Saturday afternoons and Sundays is to learn far more about the real man and his character than any employer can tell.

“And what is true of the individual is true of the nation as a whole. Grave students investigating our national character incline to base their judgment upon our success or failure, in their view, as workers. Are our employers enterprising and far-sighted? Are the employed keen, careful and industrious? Then all is well, it seems, with Britain’s future. Are, as other observers maintain, masters and men alike inefficient? Then wc are ‘a nation of slackers,’ deficient in character, and bound to go under in the stress of world competition. “No doubt such verdicts are interesting, and, so far as they are based on first-hand evidence, worth serious notice. Obviously, the material welfare of any country must depend upon the brains and industry given to its work, and it is also true that the way in which a nation works does reflect, to a limited extent, a nation’s character. “Yet the careful student, especially he who is optimistic about the business outlook, might do well to postpone his eulogy of the British character until he had taken stock of the British amusements. These it is which show what kind of people we are—or, yet more significantly, what kind of people we are becoming. Traditions inherited from centuries do not perish utterly in a decade, and for a while we can lite on the virtues of our ancestors.

“But our amusements show, as our work cannot, what is our free choice to-day, and what sort of heritage the next generation will take over from us. They prove what wc really are by demonstrating wherein we find the greatest pleasure when we are at liberty. And they are both cause and effect; our national character shapes our amusements, and our amusements shape our national character. “Having these facts in mind, thoughtful people must find it difficult to feel content with many forms of amusement that attract multitudes to-day. They are deeply tainted with vulgarity. We have not in view

“ Contrary to a rather general belief, how people play is more important than how people work. Industry is, more or less, a matter of constraint. Amusements are a matter of choice. Thus the real man, and the real nation, only show themselves.after office hours.”

the recreations of any one social class. It must be owned that vulgarity disfigures the amusements both of rich and poor, both of ‘society’ and the masses.

“They are vulgar in the sense of being inane, or nasty; too often they unite these qualities. Sometimes they pander to the love of the sensational. Sometimes they are not worse than extremely vapid. Sometimes they appeal, with a diminishing amount of disguise, to the instincts of animalism. Of that type are too many of the plays produced of late. Dramatic critics who certainly do not suffer from any Puritan squeamishness have had to avow their frank disgust at the decadence of the modern theatre. . . Much the same must be said of the cinema.

“Generally speaking, the theatrical and film purveyors supply vulgarity because experience shows that it pays. In other words, it is what the public likes. When we turn to the world of literature we find that while a clever novel may succeed, a clever novel which is also salacious has a far greater chance of becoming a ‘best seller.’ In music, the popular taste is for the meretricious, the noisy, or the barbaric. Motoring, too, has now become almost a national form of amusement. In theory, it provides fresh ail* and stimulates a love of beauty. In practice, the week-end motorist encloses himself in a box and tries simply to rush past every other motorist. When he pauses he shows his appreciation of the beauties of nature by defiling every glade with garbage. “This inability to sit stilll, ths craze for rush, this impatience with al! that is not trivial, this depraved appetite for the noisy and the noisome, this vulgarity of taste in so many forms of national amusement, is an unpleasant feature of our age. Many secondary factors could be named as having had a share in bringing it about. Yet to neutralise each of them In turn would not be really to effect a cure.

“The evil lies deeper. It has its root in character itself. And character is at fault from a lack of true religion. The heart is restless, as St. Augustine said long ago, until it rests on God. Modern men and women are dissatisfied in a vague fashion, for which they cannot account. They shrink from thought, they seek refuge in anything which will give them change, noise, and excitement. They pander to the baser instincts of their nature because their spiritual faculties have been atrophied. They are loth to ‘think on the things that are pure, lovely, and of good report,’ less from any dislike of such things than from an unwillingness to think at all, so long as they can help it.

“Yet the day comes when they cannot. This vulgarity of amusement brings its nemesis of weariness and satiety. Then the Church will have its chance, if it knows how to use it. This it will do, not merely by rehabilitating* the old ideals of duty and decency, but by correlating them with a creed more personal and more vital. It will lead people to understand that its truths do not affect merely certain times and special occupations, but touch our hours of amusement as closely as they do our minutes of worship. It will show that religion is incomplete, unless it is related with every part of life. It will show that life fails unless every part of it is dominated by religion.”