WORK AND PLAY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 333, 1 February 1911, Page 2

WORK AND PLAY.

Mr G. K. Chesterton writes in "T.P's." weekly : —"For at present we all tend to one mistake: we tend to make politics too important. We tend to forget how huge a part of a man's life is the same under a Sultan and a Senate, under Nero or St. Louis. Daybreak is a never-ending glory, getting out of bed is a never-ending nuisance; food and friends will be welcomed; work and strangers must be accepted and endured; birds will go bed wards and children won't, to the end of the last evening. And the worst peri! is that in our just modern revolt against intolerable accidents we may have unsettled those things that alone make daily life tolerable. It will be an ironic tragedy if, when we have toiled to find rest, we find we are incurably restless. It will be sad if, when we have worked for our holiday. we find we have unlearnt everything but work. The typical modern man is the insane millionaire, who has drudged to get money, and then finds he cannot enjoy even money, but only drudgery. There is danger that the social reformer may silently and occultly develop some of this madness of the millionaire whom he denounces. He may find that he has learnt how to build play-grounds, but forgotten how to play. He may agitate for peace and quiet, but only propagate his own mental agitation. In his long fight to get a slave a half-holiday he may angrily deny those ancient and natural things, the zest of being, the divinity of man, the sacredness of simple'things, the health and humour ol the earth, which alone make a half-holiday even half a holiday or a slave even half a man."