GOLF IN COURT.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 2 December 1916, Page 2

GOLF IN COURT.

Is golf a moral game? This question cropped up during the hearing of a case brought in the Wellington Magistrate's Court, .fori the purpose of testing the validity of the City Coun-

cil's by-law prohibiting the playing of golf on the municipal links on Sunday. Golf has been for a long time a stock theme of press humourists, bcinsr almost as much a favourite in this respect as the mother-in-law and the German Kaiser It has been alleged that golf conduces to profanity. Mr J. J. McGrath who defended a golfer charged with breaking the by-law, asked his client —a well-known golfer —if the game was not conducive to morality. No answer was given as the magistrate interjected and asked if it had an uplifting tendency. Both learned counsel engaged in the case are Irishmen, but confess to being golfers, and Mr McCarthy, presiding magistrate, also admitted having a knowledge cf the game. Mr McGrath went so far as to confess that he had played it on Sunday, but did not adduce this as evidence of the moral effects of the game. The general atmosphere in the court was pro-golf. The bench was willing to dispense with the evidence shoAving that golf was a safe game, and not a nuisance. Golf is an ancient game, invented in Scotland to keep middle-aged men out of mischief, and may to that extent be considered a moral game. Whether it is legal to play it on the municipal links on Sunday remains undecided. I The moral effects of the ancient game of golf were canvassed -by Mr J. J. McGrath. He failed to get any denial to his statement that golf was not a nuisance, nor a dangerous 'game, but on 'the contrary a health-giving, and therefore a moral, exercise. The playing of the game on Sunday, it appears, causes offence to some worthy persons onnoctod with a Presbyterian institution in the neighbourhood of th-3 links. Roth golf and Presbyterianism had their origin in Scotland, a famous realm, the people of which arc much given to argument and metaphysics. Three representatives of the Presbyterian conscience were in court' when

- f .oc- , the breaker of the eity by-laws forbidding Sunday playing was hoard. Mr MeGrath, who appeared for the defence, has a learned friend of Scotch extraction; who furnished Mm with an argument taken from Scripture. Tli e exact place in scripture was found by a scribe who was connected with the Church in the days of his innocent youth. The said argument consisted of a statement-that the game of golf had biblical sanction, as Ananias and Sapphira had fallen dead after a bad lie —or two bad lies. What the ministers thought of the argument is not known