The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY. AUGUST 23, 1930 THE TEST IN LIFE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1058, 23 August 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY. AUGUST 23, 1930 THE TEST IN LIFE

DUR HAPS the supreme test in life is liow every man may leave ■l the lields of his triumph or the place of his failure. To do either well and with grace calls for a high moral courage. It is so easy to be a failure, even “a faithful failure,” and success largely has to be conceded. The world is capricious in its judgment. upon both.

Consider, for example, the abrupt dismissal of Jack Hobbs at Kennington Oval the other day, and his farewell to Test cricket against Australia. His departure from his field of triumph was described as “the saddest feature” of a great day in an historic game. Had not the Australian team, strong in its ardent youthfulness, and respectful to an old enemy and an old friend, gathered around the veteran to cheer him onward to his final assault upon its bowling? And a few minutes later “Hobbs shook his head in misery as he was dismissed for nine by deflecting a fast hall from Fairfax into the stumps. His batting glove dropped from his listless hand as lie walked back, amid sympathetic cheers, on his home ground on which he had been a dominating figure for twenty years.”

That emotional scene may seem to many people a picture overpainted with poignancy because it revealed merely an incident in a game, a result, indeed, for which wily bowlers were playing all they knew. Possibly the story was overdone, but there was light as well as shade on the canvas. “Well, that is the end,” said Ilobbs. “I wish I could have made some runs; England needs them so badly.” Whs there not a fine resoluteness in the iamous batsman’s wistful mood for better service? Yes, England needs runs badly not only on a Test cricket ground, but on the wider testing fields of rival nations. And England needs more men and women with greater willingness to make some runs. ■A-U. Australian journalist in England has been looking for chinks in Great Britain’s armour. lie gloats over the defects he discovered. So, “the Englishman appears to me a depressing, tragi-comic figure who sees nothing funny in cricketers being proclaimed ‘giants’ and ‘heroes’ and nothing self-demeaning in the hysteria with which he hails a feat of daring by a countrywoman that frankly ought t» have been performed* by himself.” Such criticism may seem severe from a man who must know that his own countrymen have been going without sleep for nights in order to hear radio stories about Don Bradman batting bis way through felicitous centuries. Y r et the scornful Melbourne writer has had something much harsher to say about poor Old England and its decadent people. “I look around in this great lovely London, I go into the provinces and peer under the caps of workers drivelling eternally about dog-fights and Test matches, and search for the eye that suggests a Nelson, or for the perpendicular backbone that announces a Drake. . . . Everywhere there is that peculiar air of lassitude, of that terrible slackness which goes with age.”

The eyes that the peering Australian could not find under tlie peaked caps of drivellers about Test matches are not yet closed in England. Indeed, their penetrating vision is directed today upon the frailties of Australia and the “terrible slackness” which over there goes with spoilt youth. It will be British eyes and British wisdom which ultimately will give to Australian politicians and their deluded people “the perpendicular backbone that announces a Drake.” ,There are occasions when contrasts should be avoided. It may be quite true that there is a weariness of age in Great Britain, also too much lassitude and love of sport, but behind the apparent and real foolishness there still is much of the pioneering faith and courage which, in other days, broke into the far wilderness and conquered desolation. Look at something which would trery Australian into an ecstasy of pride: “When Bradman came out of the pavilion with his bat you could have guessed he was a man of genius even if you had never heard of him. . . . By the time he had scored 50 even the.most ardent pro-English spectator in the ground would have been bitterly disappointed if he had gone out. Batting like this is something outside partisanship. Bowler after bowler was tried against him. He exhausted the bowlers; lie exhausted the fielders, whom he kept on a perpetual run; he exhausted himself so that when Woodful was stumped he sank over his bat like an oarsman who has collapsed after a race. But he did not exhaust the spectators. They forgot to care who won. They asked for nothing better than that this should go on for ever.” Is not that a fine picture of England at its best? And could there have been or would there have ever been a Don Bradman without the masterly inspiration of Jack Hobbs and a hundred great English batsmen before him all now phantoms of the past? It is easy to cry what’s the matter with England and decry her temporary weaknesses and follies. But in Great Britain there still is the mettle that makes and keeps a nation solid. She can afford to smile over gibes at her determination to maintain traditional venerations, to support a hereditary aristocracy, and “to worship those with lots of money,” for beneath that froth and fluff there runs a deep stream of humour and kindly tolerance, to say nothing of the current of common sense which eventually will help to lift Australia out of its financial morass. Many men in England are doing great things and doing them well. Others are pressing forward and upward to fine achievement. The test in life does not yet bring Great Britain down to the dust. For a long time it will go on giving inspiration and wisdom to the world. Even if England were stricken tomorrow there would be left enough testimony to prove that strong-willed men had passed that way.