SPORT AND TRADE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2146, 31 July 1907, Page 1

SPORT AND TRADE.

Those who think that the British give too much time to sport will find evidence in support of their case in 1 Mr. Douglas Story’s new book on the Far East. It may be true, he says, that the Empire was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but it is certain that British commerce is in danger of being lost on tho racecourses and pleasure-grounds of the East. “There (at Hong-Kong) on the verandah of tho Golf Club we should sit and watch the football or tho cricket, the polo and the golf, the men playing hockey, and the raceponies led out to exerciso. Ax ono pursuit or another wo should see ovry male Briton of Hoitg-Kong engaged, from his. Excellency the Governor to the most recently-joined ■subaltern in the barracks, from tho elderly Attorney-General to the youngest clerk in a shiping offices. Sport is sapping our genius for expansion.” The world has an inconvenient way of rolling on without heed to holidays and games, and our commerce suffers while our agents play. Tho public- at Home do not know, says Mr. Story, tho proportion of the year in the East that is devoted to holidays. “In England, by the strenuous efforts of Sir John Lubbock, we have secured six bank holidays in twelve months. li the Far East those six are prolonged to nine days, and in addition, business is suspended during the Bpring race meeting, and during the autumn race meeting, during Chinese New Yoar, during the cricket week, and upon certain other occasions of festivity. British houses of business close at a certain hour in tho afternoon, but light may be seen in the German offices till a late hohr. British trado is slipping away into the handß of the German, the Ameracan, and the Japanese, who work while the Eng-> lishman plavs. Twenty years ago Mr Kipling swelled with patriotism as ho watched the fleets of Hong-Kong from the balcony of the Victoria Hotel. To-day he would see the red ensign of Great Britain no longer flying from .four out of every five vessels. Only one out of every two carry it now. He would he struck with the great liners of Germany, the United States, and Japan, the “tramps” of Norway, and tlio coasters of Japan; he would be surprised at the palatial German Club, and if he went inside would he still more surprised to hear 110 English spoken there. /, ■- ,