GOOD MAN, GILLIGAN!

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 5, 28 March 1927, Page 6

GOOD MAN, GILLIGAN!

PNOBS and snobbery no longer flourish, but they continue to - exist in odd places for the contemptuous amusement of a world that has outgrown an astonishing amount of ignorance in this generation. Strangely enough, snobs do not grow on the grand old oak of your true aristocracy; they are the “nuts” of ranker growth. Time was when snobs misruled society. You were a nobody if you earned your living. Now you are a nobody if you don’t. These are better days, wherein a man is judged by his worth. The glorious game of cricket had more than its share of snobbery. English newspapers referred to an amateur as “ Mr.” in their reports. Professionals were merely “ Brown ” or “ Smith.” Yet it was the professionals who rescued English cricket from the slough of years and regained the “ashes.” Since then the amateur-professional line has shown a distinct fading. True to the traditions of your true aristocrat and man of breeding, Lord Irwin, Governor-General of India, dined the whole of the visiting Marylebone cricket team and invited three professionals and three amateurs to stay at Government House. The State Governor and the gentlemanly native Princes also treated the professionals and amateurs without distinction, but certain clubs in India offered the amateurs honorary membership and ignored the professionals. Then it was that Gilligan, the team’s captain, and an amateur be it remembered, “put his foot down.” He declared he would not tolerate social distinctions and that if his men were good enough to meet in the cricket field they should be good enough for the social sphere. So the amateurs went not where the professionals went not, and thus were the snobs snubbed. Good man, Gilligan!