TOO MUCH SPORT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4520, 21 October 1930, Page 1

TOO MUCH SPORT.

A NOVELIST PROTEST'S,

DUE TO MENTAL EMPTINESS,

There lias rarely, say the gossips, been swell a season for sport as this. IW'hat with Tests and W'imibledon and golf championships, foreign crews for Henley, and sweepstakes of a magnitude undreamed of ;hy our forefathers, •the whole nation seems to have had its eyes or its interests on the playing' fields since this mockery of a summer Diegan, writes Sir Max Pemberton in the “Daily Mail.’ We may be going' economically to the devil, but the people obviously are enjoying both bread and circuses. Ask any young man, or, for that matter, any young woman, what is our paramount interest to-day, and the answer possibly is “Bradman” or “Bobby Jones.” For these there is neither India nor a Budget. A profound indifference as to our national bal-ance-sheet prevails. “THAT’S ALL RIGHT.”

The man in the mound stand cares not a sendo for the East or the West. He (reminds me of the . youth who, being told at the beginning of the Great War that the Germans might come to Manchester, replied: “Well, that's all right; they won’t stop the football.” Many years ago iiudyard Kipling got much ignorant abuse for writing of “muddied oafs” and “flannelled fools.” What that great writer meant, I take it, was to suggest that young men are much better .occupied in playing games than in watching them. Wie can all assent to . this, while admitting that Saturday football and Saturday crirket are great good things for the millions both of' the north and of the south who find little recreation in bleak lives and certainly deserve what they can got.

But the question of “too much sport” goes much deeper than Ibis. What we may ask, is the physical condition of young men likely to become if their idea of exercise is associated witli a bench on a cricket field or an iron railing on which (o lean when two teams arc playing for “the Cup?”

Is Ibis not a sure road lo that 03 category which flic gospellers of health deplore? Are these “spectators” really sportsmen themselves- —or just idlers who pay llie hired gladiator cheerfully and cure not a straw 'whether he comes from Blackpool or Shoreditch? QUITE MODERN.

Let it, be admitted 'that all this frenzy of playing is quite a modern thing in our story. The Plau(agenets legislated against the young mail who would not go out and shoot -arrows and forbade him sternly to kick a ball with his feet. Laws of a similar character were passed even in Elizabeth's days, and many an. apprentice went to prison in Stuart times for making a wicket of the watch or kicking an alderman when he meant to kick a football.

Later on wo played games more sedately; and, saive upon the racecourse, no sporting meeting drew more than a handful of spectators. To-day a mob of 45,000 will applaud somebody it had never seen before because he hits another man on the solar plexus and £20,000 depends oji the blow. Two continents may he shaken to the marrow Dry such a. contest. The fall of -St. 'Paul’s Cathedral or the renunciation by Mr. Snowden of Cobdenism would cause no such interest nor provoke such sorrow or hilarity.

iWe take* nothing' seriously today and the apotheosis of sport is, perhaps, a direct result of our mental, emptiness. As a player of games all my life, I deplore the idle sensationalism which lires the enthusiasm of so many brainless youths to-day; and I think it a poor omen that- the Arena stands for so uiiucli in the lives of so many and the Forum for so little.

It is obvious that a great national effort must he made sooner or later to re-hvin that economic place we held formerly among the nations —and neither upon the cricket held, the links, nor at Wimbledon do 1 discover such a preparation for that momentous encounter which alone will promise us victory. Nor should it he forgotten that if we are the vanquished in such a battle, neither bread nor circuses will be forthcoming' for the “Sportsmen’’ .who are so wholly indifferent to the realities about us.