GAMES CRAZE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 July 1938, Page 9

GAMES CRAZE

SOME AMAZING EXAMPLES. So diverse are our characters,, so complex our make-up, that we are as liable to catch a disease of the mind as to catch a disease of the body, writes Mr Arthur Mee. The infection of games and sports is amazing in its rapidity. Why does a game catch on, after being dormant for long periods? Why, for example, did golf, after being obscurely played by a few Englishmen (in emulation of the Scots), suddenly flash through the land? In 1880 it was played at Blackheath by a few old gentlemen who wore scarlet coats so that they shohld not hit each other in driving; now the making of golf courses has become a big business. So with dominoes. No one seems to play the game now in England, but in Estonia it has suddenly become a fever. Fortunes are lost at it, and we are told that the Government has had to make laws about it. Then from south-west England comes the strange news that tortoise-racing has become a vogue! A Weymouth Minister condemns this sorry sport, which has become popular in South Dorset. The contests take place on billiard tables, the tortoises carrying toy jockeys! The human mind has so many resources, given even a little education, that one wonders at the resort to such inferior substitutes for true enjoyment.