THE CHEERING CROWD.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 8, 2 October 1937, Page 4

THE CHEERING CROWD.

There is certainly no less enviable figure than the man who is unable to applaud, observes "Y.Y." in the " New Statesman and the Nation." Self-control is a beautiful thing, but it can look curiously like indifference. I should bate to see a football crowd watcbing tbe game witb the impassive countenance of Red Indians. If this kind of thing became the rule, I imagine, it would be the end of football. You cannot have great football without cheering. Pedants say that football should be a game for the players without reference to the spectators, but it is the cheers of the spectators that have often decided the result of the match. It may he that, from the point of view of the rationalist, there is an element of danger in this passion for cheering. The cheerloving moh is certainly not a reasonable creature, and it is on its cheers that all the great misleaders, as well as all the great leaders, of mankind have thriven. Dictators live on cheers as actions and demagogues do. Forbid cheering in Europe and I douht whether any dictatorship could survive. Many of the people who are cheering dictators to-day would undouhtedly have been cheering their opponents equally enthusiastically if things had turned out differently. Browning wrote a poem on the lack of prineiple in the cheers of the multitude, and, though the cheers do good to the multitude, they can be very misleading to the idol of the hour. The puhlic is just as likely to cheer his overthrow as his triumph, The simple truth is that , . jt must fefflgii