GAME OF LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 19786, 9 February 1928, Page 16

GAME OF LIFE

A’SCHOOLMASTER'S VIEWS THE CALLS OF ACTION. In one sense the scene at an Association football cup final is a microcosm, a revelation of the world of men in miniature. There we set twenty-two men doing something, and as many thousands looking on—twenty-two makers, and twenty-two thousand spectators. There may be many reasons for this disproportion, not certainly in the control of the majority, but the fault may lie elsewhere; but fault it is, and the spectacle is not edifying, for let it be remembered that the twenty-two alone are playing the game (writes Mr M. L. Jacks, head master of Mill Mill School, in the ‘St. Martin’s Review’). So it is in life Those only play the game of life who spend all their time in doing —not only the time when they arc nominally “at work,” but also the time when they are their own masters, free to exercise a healthy activity or to indulge a lazy passivitv, to recreate themselves or to stand still, or to undo the fibres of their spiritual being. And these doers arc a diminishing liost. During those searching years between 1914 and 1918 there was a universal desire to be doing something, and no being was more unhappy than that man, woman, or responsible child who, through age or natural infirmity, was compelled to be inactive. The man beyond the age limit or in class C..‘5, the woman bound by conditions which allowed her no release, the boy or girl old enough to be at school—-these wore to be pitied. But where has gone that fever or fervor? Whither has vanished the gleam? For in these “piping” times of peace there is jittlc of such general craving for activity, and men are more ready to rest than to do. And yet the calls of action arc. 1 believe, no wdiit less insistent, and the field narrower by not an inch.

Perhaps the cause lies partly in the preator difficulty of bearing the call and of discerning the field when there is no immediate and overwhelming threat, excluding all other interests; when there is no battlefield ' shutting out the view of every other field. But the cause lies, too, in something more material than this. Since the beginning of the century, and particularly since the war, we have been living in a world which makes it increasingly easy to live and yet be a looker-on. LOOKING BACKWARD.

In the old days, when households were self-supporting, when villages were cut off from the main stream of life, when there wore few books and fewer newspapers, when there were no cinemas and only occasional visits of strolling players for amusement—in those days a man was thrown back on himself, not only for earning a livelihood for his body, but also for earning a livelihood for his soul; and this latter ho did by developing some bobby which perhaps became a village industry—by fashioning beautiful things, by making poems, by dancing on the village green. So was lie likely to bo a doer not only while lie went forth to bits labors in the daytime, but also when the night came and no man could -work—not, not work, but enjoy an active and a recreative leisure. Now all that lias changed. Newspapers are within the reach of all, and newspapers which provide matter adapted to the needs of the laziest in the form most easily apprehended. Often it happens that nobody need read further than the headline —lie who runs may read—and if bo docs ho reads sensational paragraphs which cost nothing to grasp and leave nothing to work on. The cheapest, and therefore the most accessible books are generally Ihe cheapest not only in price but in real value; recent statistics from many public libraries tell a, depressing talc in this respect, but the records of the few libraries, where attempts have been made to combat the disease ol the best seller, reveal that this talc need never have been told; the lault is not. in ourselves, but in our .star writers, ami in the placid assumption of I hose who are responsible for the literature that reaches us that we can enjoy no star of greater magnitude. So it is, too, with (lie eiiicma, and to a lesser degree with the theatre. Both are fraught with boundless possibilities for good, for giving ns something In “bite on,” for providing ns with material for the exercise of onr intellectual and spiritual powers—exorcise which is a form of doing. But they fail. The theatre sometimes, the cinema very rarely docs this lor ns. ’.I lie tendency is all the other way—to help ns to pass an idle hour, idle boean.se the .spectacle on which wo arc invited to look makes no demand on any part of ns and calls forth no activity of any sort; and the tragedy of it all is that the more occupations there are offered for an idle hour, the more idle hours there will be to occupy.

The criticism here is a criticism of quality; newspapers, books, theatres, cinemas—they are all poterttially good, but they fail to fulfil their potentiality; the newspaper is folded up, the last chapter is read, the curtain falls on the final act, the lights go up in the cinema palace, and the man should go home to his bed more of a, man; the written word should have led him to read new depths in human life, the spoken play to hoar the more solemn music of existence, the moving picture should have moved him nearer lo the goal of his spiritual being. In each instance be should have been compelled “ to do something about it”; but usually the doing is all done for him. The whole of life tends to become a cinema show'. The development of wireless telephony brings ns to another aspect of the danger. It is remarkable and praiseworthy that the wireless programmes should have maintained so high a standard of real value (and that these programmes tire welcomed is further evidence, added to that of the good public libraries, that the depressing tale need never be told). But there is danger here, too, though it is a more general danger and more subtle in its attack. ft is sometimes better to do a little thing than to listen to a big one; and there are innumerable small duties to be done, duties of social intercourse, duties to a family, duties to a sick friend, which arc in danger of being omitted by the habit of listening-in. Onr bearing of the word—whether conveyed to ns through the medium of printed paper, drama, or broadcaster—must never be a substitute (as it often is) for action. “Be ye doers of the vvord, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. The deceit lies in the belief that to bo a hearer a looker-on, is to live.” | “The man that standetli idle," said Brother Giles, “ loses this world and ! the next; for be brings forth no fruit j in himself, and profits not his neighbor.”