GAMES AS CURE FOR GLUMNESS

Evening Star, Issue 19658, 10 September 1927, Page 11

GAMES AS CURE FOR GLUMNESS

A frequent charge brought against us as a race by foreigners is one of gloom. Our climate, our faces, and our general mien are alleged to bo charged with melancholy. And really there is something to be said for the foreigner’s point of view. Go for a journey in a bus or any crowded train, and note the proportion of harassed and worried faces about you. It is depressing!? large. One of our little idiosyncrasies is to be miserable over trifles, but to accept big calamities with composure and even with a smile. Foreigners know this—they learnt it in the war, and have a kind of bewildered respect for us on that account. Only they go on, quite rightly, charging us with being glum (says.the Rt, Hon. A. L. fisher, in the ‘Westminster Gazette’). Hut there are, after all) degrees of glumness, and many'of Ihcra are simply masks. Real gluraness, on the other hand, is unmistakable, and in nine cases out of ten it means iack of health. As a race we are constitutionally unabla to bo happy and idle too. It we are to he happy and to look happy, wc must bo doing something; and as we can’t be always working (for wo know that all work and no play makes us dull boys), our times of recreation must not be times of mere loafins. If the laborer in his spare time is a sportsman, he will be a sportsman all the tune, and he will bo happy; if his holidays hold no Declination for him he will be glum. Oolce far niento docs not suit the British climate. Wo hear much of the ideal of equal opportunities in life for all, but if sporting opportunities were at least more nearly equal a greater revolution would take place in this country than the most crimson Red could imagine. We should be much' healthier and happier, and therefore better workers, and a"pood deal more prosperous. Whoever saw a merry Communist? Whoever saw a bloody not start on a sunlit cricket field ? To snread moro happiness among the people is the first commandment of statesmanship. For industrial discontent arises from hard conditions, of which actual poverty as such is only one. A man does not need to he merely free of disease; he must be actively and nositively healthy. In the hulk the best, happiest, and most economical method of keeping men healthy is to give them a sporting chance of enjoying sport. A man earning his living under a roof needs as often as possible the stimulus of active and interesting occupation under the ssy. From the stress of competition and co-operation Amongst other men in the vital matter of existence he needs from time to time to he taken out into the open, there i<> enjoy the pleasant competition and cooperation of sport. The man with the truiv snorting spirit, which is really the love of 'doing something for its own sakesomething for nothing, as we say—will soon instinctively apply the same principle to his daily work. He will know that every job worth doing at all is worth doing well; and, like the workers of old, ho will vie with hie fellows not so much to get a monetary advantage over them as to show how much batter he can do bis job than they. Sportsmanship means giving the best that is in you irrespective of results. And, although it is quite possible to be a sportsman indoors, the proper place in which to train is the open field. The man who spends his day in a factory and his evening in a stuffy cinema begins the next day with a glum mind. But with the area of playing fields at his disposal so ludicrously out of propori ion to his needs, what else is there for him to do? . . ■■ .