THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY SATURDAY, MAY 2, 1908. A SENSELESS EXHIBITION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9080, 2 May 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY SATURDAY, MAY 2, 1908. A SENSELESS EXHIBITION.

It is remarkable how prone people are to make heroes out of —well, human quiddites. A little while ago a smoking contest was held in London, and attracted an enormous amount of attention. The portrait of the winner of the prize—the man who kept his pipe alight longest—was published in halif-a-(!ozen papers, and the champion became the lion of the clay among u considerable section of the people. A little later the cable informed the world that a man had broken the piano-playing record by playing continuously lor about seventy hours. He also was a hero —of a sort. He would have played longer —perhaps till he died from exhaustion and thus became a l<ind of saint—if neighbours had not got out an injunction to restrain him from disturbing their peace. Coming nearer home we find that a man has started in Wellington a cluh-> swinging endurance test. He proposes to swing a set of clubs continuously, with no fewer than seventy complete circles per minute, for

over sixty consecutive hours, and ha 3 actually been engaged upon that useless and literally heart-breaking operation since 9 o'clock on Thursday morning. It is a stipulation that the club swinger is to have no rest or stop from start to finish, and that two judges are to be in attendance whilst the test is in progress. One admires pluck and endurance —they are amongst the highest attributes of human nature—when exhibited in a case of necessity or utility, but this club-swinging endurance test, like the piano playing or smoking test, is a pit'ful exhibition which tends only to show how muscle may be developed at the sacrifice of the brain. This contest of a man against himself, —for he is endeavouring to "lower his own record," is seriously defended by certain athletes on the ground that it will have the effect of drawing attention in the dominion to the merits of a very valuable form of exercise, and that the resultant good will be incalculable. Talk of this kind is claptrap. Obviously it does not need tests of the sort to show the value of any form of exercise. What examples of this natui'e are likely to do is easily' imaginable. Youths will be induced to emulate this "king of clubs," and it may be that some of them, if they do not succumb during the valueless effort, will probably strain their systems to the extent of becoming weaklings for tht remainder of their lives. The folly of such exhibitions is so patent that the wonder is that even a small section of an enlightened community can give it the slightest countenance.