WHAT ENGLAND HAS TAUGHT THE WORLD.

Hokitika Guardian, 1 September 1925, Page 4

WHAT ENGLAND HAS TAUGHT THE WORLD.

During the irar 1 was walehii!jp ..nuio French soldier.., in putt res kicking; a loot hall about. says A tvltibald Marshall in the Loudon “Daily .Mail." “There arc livu things.” said lav compa uiou, "(hat England has put all over Iho world -- Its.! hall aid putters." And that led us t-» think of other tilings jn which our loaders i:ad been universally followed. I remember that we mentioned li iy Scout s. the Salvation Army, and t !••’ Sam 3tr.iv. lie hell. A nation's pn dominance is shown as iilileh ill the little things in which its lead is followed as in the big tilings - perhaps more. What other nation's example has been followed in so many respects as England'sWc Itavc given to the world most of its games and sports, I.avn tennis began in Kngland; s i did 1.-idgo. Golf is a Scottish game in its origins, but it had hecn played in Scotland for centuries before ii began to spread everywhere, and it did that when England look it up. We have never made a universal game of cricket. which seems to belong only to people of our own temperament, and is hard.lv played even in Scotland, Ireland or Wales. In the matter of men’s clothes wc exercise an unassailable example. In the Italian sea-side town from which I am writing the young men are going about in recognisable varieties of the Norfolk jacket though I must admit that their remarkable coillures “oem t< owe metre inspiration to the Zulu. I lie higher you go in the social scale the nearer you get to the English pattern, so that a well-dressed foreigner is hard lv distinguishable from an English gentleman. One ontstandin:' ohoraeteristie of (ho Englishman abroad is that whoreever ho settles himself he runs his life on English lines, with no more titan a flavour of the c-uintry in wi'-h lie takes op Iris residence. Not only that hat if he settles in any ) lac"' in snflicient numbers he draws the natives u( his own sort into Ins ways. In Fra nee, Italy, before the war in Germane and Austria, and to a lesset degree in other countries. English colonies have nourished in a way that m: other nation, has even approached. Germans were to he found m great numbers and are now returnin'.; to France and Italy ; hut they were ttlv.ec a race apart and are so more than ever now. Even the Americans don't ‘‘put it over" as the English do.

Vcu I’iive only lo imst-riiio :i fjrmip of ;uiv milieu whatever settling thomsVlvt >, let ns say. in Hris'hlon of I.■lanilnilno', ns we have settled in Cannes or TVii-iliei'oi-ii, with their own elide, lo v. nieh we should ho proud to he Jnvire l. their own <;ames. in which we should join, and their own nnlior.nl I , so-, that there is no oilier side lo I lie |iii l uiv at all. We eau do wlial no other nalion ean do in this respect. and lake it as <| tii to a natural time ihai we should do it.