Leader Writers, Financiers and This "Cement Racket"

Radio Record, 8 July 1938, Page 6

Leader Writers, Financiers and This "Cement Racket"

"i OSIE" here presents some candid opinions | ’ about sport and cementing the bonds of Empire. It seems particularly topical because half the male population of N.Z. sits up in the small hours listening to 22 men of Australia and England laying on the bat and the cement, while the crowd cheers wildly every time the opposition scores an imperial | CeMfUry . ee

P TLEN I was very young, a Clever Person who later became a schoolteacher, asked me what it was that kept bricks together. An old catch this, but I was young and incennons and:so gave

the obvious answer. With the pleasing air of omni: science, which was to stand him in such good stead later, he thereupon pointed out that, on the contrary, it was the cement which kept bricks apart. I am reminded of that not altogether pointless catch when the country shakes-even this neutrai country-with Test match fever, and the press breaks out in a rash of editorials in which one spot is quite indistinguishable from another. Perhaps in length and style minor variations are perceptible, but the matter seems to be moulded from one matrix. As soon as a touring team approaches the shores of any part of the British Empire, leader writers joyfully abandon such favourite terms as ‘‘implement’’ and liquidate’ for a moment, and give Hitler and Mussolini practically a free hand in Europe. The tourists are welcomed as fellow members of that great and glorious Empire on which the sun never sets. ‘This astronomical peculiarity may not, incidentally, be a British monopoly, but everyone knows that the Portuguese and Dutch play very inferior cricket. The tourists are accused of being ambassadors of goodwill; they are reminded that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, and a little clanking of bones heralds the apy=

proach of those sturdy old skeletons ‘‘Mens sana in corpore sano" and ‘‘May the better side win."’ A cricket team will be gravely warned that cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties, while a Rugby

team can hardly escape some reference to Keen and friendly rivalry." As a final blow, all teams are assured that their visit will do much to cement the bonds of Empire. Leader writers cannot be blamed for much of this. Most of us would write in a similar strain in the same circumstances-that is, if we had to write leaders for a living. Yet, at the risk of being reviled as a cynic, no sportsman, an ungrateful and unpatrio-, tic snake in the grass, or a Communist, or even a Jew, I would question this cement business. It would be unfair to pretend that interchanges of teams is entirely without value in ‘‘forging the links’’ of Empire. But, on the other hand, the absurd prominence given to success in sport has 1% last made winning a matter of national prestige. And who, indeed, likes a blow in the national prestige? Once a game becomes grimly serious, its primary purpose is frustrated and friction is almost inevitable. Exactly how much cementing did Jardine do in his last trip to Australia? a At the Empire games, the South Africans and West Indians could not have been more antagonistic if they had been Nazis and Communists,

The last Indian cricket team to visit England seems to have used an (Continued on next page.) a

(Continued from top page 6.) inferior brand of cement. The Springboks and Australians iu the second test last year only failed to use battleaxes because by some unfortunate oversight the officials omitted to keep a supply on hand. Yurther illustration would be tedious, but not impossible. If the Statute of Westminster means anything (and even Berriedale Keith is a little uncertain about parts of it), then certain disintegrating forces within the Empire must be stronger than the forces tending to. promote greater solidity. What these forces are is not relevant here, but one can justifiably regret that games are failing to do much in a positive direction, because the Press, the people, and the financiers of sport have, conspired to make them gladiatorial shows in which one nation glories in the abiljty of its chosen re. presentatives to "whack the tafls off" the others. The sooner that is honestly realised, the sooner sport will return to its correct perspective.