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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 98, 11 September 1912, Page 4

THE OPEN-ATR CTRL. Christehurch at the moment is blessed among the cities, for it has the privilege pf; entertaining over two hundred hockey girls. Always to the front in the matter of well-doing Taranaki has contributed its quota to this bevy of enthusiastic modern girls, and the Taranaki team is worthily upholding its end in the championship content. There was, of course, a time when the very thought of girls engaging in field sports would have made a proper and 'highly respectable world stand 'aghast,in disapproval. But the world, fortunately, has outgrown rtianv t>f its conventions and obsolete superstitions. ■ In New Zealand particularly the emancipation of women from social, mental and physical bondage has proceeded apace. It is interesting under these' circumstances- to bo reminded bv the novelists of the Early and Mid-Vic-torian era .that it is not very long ago when ill-health was considered genteel and good health and good spirits were regarded as being the reverse of ladylike. The young lady who could not "swoon away" at the slightest provocation, or the one who did not suffer from early morning "spleen" had no pretensions to belonging to rank and fashion. In fact, the most strenuous occupation to which the young ladies of that age were permitted to apply their delicate fingers was the crochetting of antimacassars or the manufacture of samplers. By way of calisthenics they scorned the cold shower hath, deep-breathing and the punching ball, and instead had lip-form-ing exercises, which consisted of the serious and solemn pronunciation of such words as "prunes" and "prisms." Slop ing shoulders were cured by the blackboard, and tight corsets and tight shoes were the universally adopted remedies for the crudities of Nature. The processes which have replaced these languishing and anaemie damsels bj r the sturdy Lasses of to-day have been slow but certain. Croquet- and archery paved the way for more energetic field pastimes-, and the step from lawn tennis to golf and hockey was ultimately an easy one, although it was taken at first with some degree of hesitancy. We have not as vet acquired the football girl or the prize-fighting lady, but these pastimes, of course, are not suited to the sex. Apart from this, there arc still plenty of crusty masculine critics of an older age who persist that our girls would be "better at home darning socks," quite oblivious of the fact that the world's supply of threadbare socks is quite inadequate to keep the whole of the female population employed during the whole of their waking hours. Every time a woman attempts to increase the sphere of her mental or physical activities she has hurled at her the injunction to "go and darn socks," until the average woman can be readily forgiven foi conceiving the sock as an abominatioa and a plague. The girls who now engagein open-air games are laying a foundation of fresh and wholesome vitality which will better fit them for their more serious duties in later life than would a rigid adherence to the advice of their critics. We have advanced a long wayeven since the days of the close corporation of Princess Ida. and, thank goodness, that advance has included a general realisation of the fact that elea" and healthy open-air sports are quite as necessary in the cultivation of clean and healthy bodies for our girls as are tli-i vagaries of prudish vogues and frinperies.