PUBLIC OPINION.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 January 1928, Page 3

PUBLIC OPINION.

AN IMPORTANT AMENITY. National debility is a grave matter, and so is social sulkiness. The lack of open space for games lies very close to tho root of both of them. It is in vain that medical science lengthens life for us, if it is all the time to decline in vigour and quality. The utmost of social reforms will not bring contentment to those for whom the natural balance of existene has been deflected from the start. Elaborate education without play is like a rich diet without vitamins. The middle-class parent may take mental instruction upon trust, hut he knows that a boyhood without games would be robbed of health, comradeship, mutual discipline, and happy memories which make up the larger part of life’s capital, in the provision for the elementary school we have too miieli reversed this attitude, taking infinite pains with the intellectual curriculum, and leaving the most vital interests of childhood to chance. To correct that disparity will require much effort and much expense. Blit it is among the very very plainest of duties, and all the more imperative because of its tardy recognition. It is a crusade in which public and private endeavour must both lie enlisted. As our way is, the pioneering is of a voluntary kind, and the Playing Fields Association takes the lend with an appeal worthy of so needful and so ambitious an enterprise.—The “ Observer.”

AUCTION BRIDGE. From time immemorial civilised man —and women—have craved for pastime. The skiu-elad caveman probably did not feel the tedium of the long winter evenings nearly as acutely as the modern guest at a house party, where they are short of a fourth for bridge. Throughout the ages men have been busy with the devising of sports and games for the exercise of body and mind, and. more than this, as an antidote to that greatest human curse, empty leisure and boredom. The centuries have laboured, and from the accidental seed of some little pictures devised to amuse a crazy French monarch have evolved the most absorbing. the most fascinating, the most brain-testing of all pastimes—auction bridge. If it he licit the king of indoor sports, it is the ace. Nothing in this world is static—not even games —and unless games are allowed to evolve, to develop, to progress in accordance with the growing intellectual needs of the communities who play them, they inevitably become Hat, stale, and probably unprofitable. CTibbage is dead, tipcat lias lost its vogue, and, except in the wilderness of Surhurhia, even whist is regarded as a curiosity. The present generation is, indeed, fortunate in its heritage of auction bridge. The hoys and girls I of to-day have been born into a. world with the most amazing pastime ready to hand for their delectation, if they have the wisdom and the energy to master it.—Sir Hamilton Grant, in the “ Evening Standard.”

DEMOCRACY. The essential and characteristic feature of democracy is its organic quality. Democracy must he horn, not made; for it rests absoluctly upon an organic, not a mechanical, conception of politics. A living organism has mind, will, life of its own ; a machine, until made active by some'impulse external to and independent of itselt, is a mere inert and meaningless mass ol matter. It is because democracy lias the'capacity of exhibiting the matures of a living organism—the tissue and substance of which are the characters and personalities, the aims, the outlook, the ideals, the hopes, and the wishes of the individual men and women who compose it—that it can claim to be the highest form of human government. But if this claim is to he made good, it- is indispensable that democracy should be true to the principle o| its being, unci Soil the organic element. should predominate over the mechanical. When it is otherwise, when the mcchancial element is uppermost, what appears to he democracy is really a changeling and—since the corruption of the best is the worst—the most worthless, it not the most dangerous form of human government. And further, that organic quality requires for its preservation the collision and contact of opposite forces. The collision and contact of party is as essential for the political organism as the collision and contact of sex is for the physical.—Noel Skelton in “ Ihe Quarterly Review.”

OVERDOING IT. The judges at the Brighton Musical Festival have not omitted to include in their appraisal of competitors tlie customary attack on wliat is comprehensively called jazz. Now, the domination of negroid American melody and rhythm is a weariness of the-flesh that will pass, that is in fact passing, as all crazes do. But are we not a little apt to forget in our denunciations of it both some of the virtues it possesses and some of tlie horrors that precede** it 8 To play jazz music efficiently demands a skill and precision, especially from the wind instruments which were under review at Brighton, that would have taxed most of the band contest players of Hie early part of the century. The expert saxophonist of today need not blush in llie presence ol the euphonium soloist who gave us

“ Nazareth ” in and out ol season towards the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, and it may be doubted whether a relapse upon the persistent pertonnnnce of the overtures to “William Tell” and “Zarapn" would in all respects be a hall-mark of musical improvement. — lno “ Manchester Guardian.”

THE .MUSIC OF SUMMER. Crescendo movements would seem chiefly to characterise tlie melodies which the music of Summer will discourse for the ears of such as ha\e been educated ill the school of Pan. And only what one might expect, surely, that the triumphant march of maturing Nature should , produce a music ol maturer type, the richer and more satisfying measure ol a composer well int > his stride, so to speak, rather than that of the untried novice still more or less feeling his way—only natural that morevigorous harmonies should be evolved from this more vigorous theme? Is it so difficult to read the significance in that striking comparison between the brittle, easily snapped stems ‘ which support the jov-bells of Spring—Snowdrop and Daffodil, Bluebell and Cowslip. and all tlie rest of that fascinating crowd—and, on Hie other band, those noticeably tough and sturdy spires from which the Foxglove or Bellflower of Summer are wont to ring their chimes? Nature has now attained her prime, and. like a strong man glorying in his strength, metaphorically sticks out her chest and rejoices to show the world wliat she can do.—H. W. Shepherd-Walwyn, in “ The Fortnightly Review.”