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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 270, 11 May 1912, Page 4

A FOOTBALL FUSS. The Wellington Rugby Union lias an extraordinarily "guid conceit o' itsel'" when it imagines for one moment that the duties of the Territorials are to give way to the exigencies of the football season. Their suggestion that the Defence Department should postpone its camps because their continuance would interfere with the season's football—and incidentally with the gates—would be an impertinence if it were not so supremely ridiculous. When Drake played bowls while the Arma<la was descending upon British shores he did not send a wireless message to the Spanish Admiral asking him to postpone his visit until the match was over,but just calmly finished his game before proceeding to play ducks and "drakes" with tlie invading fleet. In a word, he did not allow his recreations to interfere with his duties. Wellington's, appeal is one of the most puerile and silly protests that a responsible sports body could possibly make. It is admitted that the Battle of Waterloo was won upon the playing fields of Eton, but it was not fought there. It is just the footballers and other athletes of the Dominion that we look to as the backbone oi the civilian forces, and they are the men who can least be spared from systematic training. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the defence proposals of the Government, they are now embodied in the law of the land, and anybody with an ounce of patriotism or loyalty to law and order should recognise that any attempt to evade their obligations is not only a miserable attitude but a distinctly unhealthy example to those unfortunate self-constituted martyrs who pose as passive registers. The Territorial scheme naturally causes a certain amount of inconvenience to everybody, but we have not yet heard any complaint from those business people who have cheerfully worked short-handed in order to allow their staffs to attend the periodical drills and training camps. The field of athletics is the very last place from which a protest should have emanated. We are glad to find that the sister unions to the Wellington body are not adopting a similar attitude, and it is probably due to this fact that the Wellington Union has somewhat modified its first hysterical shriek for help. General Godley was singularly mild and singularly courteous in his reply to the representatives of the Union, and it would have been quite excusable had he told these querulous children to go away and grow up until such time as they had studied at least the elements of the proportion of things.