The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1920. THE COMPETITIONS.

Southland Times, Issue 18845, 10 June 1920, Page 4

The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1920. THE COMPETITIONS.

To-morrow evening a meeting will be held in Invercargill for the purpose of deciding finally whether the Competitions should be revived or allowed to die. Some few days ago a meeting with a similar purpose was convened, but the sparse attendance—there were only nine people present —made it unwise to come to any decision. It is to be hoped that Friday’s meeting haa a better fate. In view of the fine pitch to which these annual festivals had been brought in Invercargill before the war interrupted their vigorous progress, the passing of the Competitions can only be a matter for deep regret. They were conducted by people who had no desire for personal gain end they did a great deal 'of good in the way of inducing our young people to become familiar with the great literary works of the language, and to develop their interpretative powers in music and poetry- No one can say that we as a community can afford to ignore the Arts. In a prosaic age of practical effort, when the tendency to measure achievement in terms of stored up gold is met everywhere, there is always a danger that the rising generations will give even less attention to the non-utili-tarian things of life than do the people of the present. Beauty has a great purpose in life and it means far more to us than we usually care to admit. Anything, therefore, that can induce us to give the .Arts a larger share in our daily affairs must be of benefit to the race. When the Competitions were in full swing the immense audiences that crowded to them showed that the interest was wide-spread and keen, but quite apart from the competitive spirit, which led to a serious desire to understand the great literary and musical works of the world, these festivals served a great purpose in reminding the general public of the fact that interpretative talent abounds in these islands even if the creative faculty has not yet been developed to an extent worthy of the country. The Competitions were such a brilliant success in Invercargill and gave such striking promise of even better things before their progress was checked, that it would be ’disastrous for us to fall into the error of believing that the past glories cannot be revived. In Christchurch and in Dunedin the revivals of the Competitions have been attended by such success that there are no misgivings in either place about the future. As to the advantages of this method of improving the interpretative talent of our young people there need be no doubt. By analogy we may quote the effects of competition in the Arts, the remarkable improvement worked in band music in the Dominion as a result of band contests.: What has been done with the bands can be done with the youth of the Dominion in the domain of letters and music. We will be deeply disappointed if the meeting to-morrow night is not well-attended and if it docs not resolve to take up energetically the task, of re-instating the Competitions. We have sufficient confidence in them as a means of raising the standard of taste in Art, to urge everybody who wishes to see an advance made along the.se lines to attend the meeting and ensure that the Competitions will come back into their own and regain the honoured place that they held before the war suspended the good work they were doing.