The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 1920. SPORT AND WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 73, 27 March 1920, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 1920. SPORT AND WAR.

For the came tltcl lacUs assistance, tor the wrong that nreds rtuistance, for the future in the distance. And the good that ice ccih do.

The compulsory introduction of games into the French Army will greatly assist in spreading the cult of sport that itook root in France long before the war, and bore fruit in the quality of French football teams and the skill of a Hubert and a ( iirpentier. The result may be to give athletics an importance comparable to that which has for generations attached to them in England. Those who thought the case against athletics rather overdone before the war will lie encouraged by tliiri latest English victory in France. It is true the casewas very strong. Probably the English- '. man's gravest fault has been his indifference to the intellectual life. He hates theories and thinking, and mistrusts the brilliant intellect.' His worship of games has been the greatest hindrance to improvement. Most of our readers are familiar with the indictment levelled against the ruling classes of Englandthe fetish of athletics at the public schools to the detriment of intellectual pursuits, the extraordinary importance attached by parents and boys to success in games, and the amount of time and energy devoted to these things in after life. A Frenchman who from his intercourse with British ollicers during the war has written a series of character studies showing remarkable insight, illustrates this frame of mind most happily when he relates having heard an English,, man say, "You would think Brown was an idiot; but no such thing—he played for his county." When he told this to the English colonel who is the central figure of his book, the colonel saw nothing surprising in the remark. It is the same Frenchman who makes another British officer say that "to interest a Frenchman in a boxing match, you must tell him that the honour of hia nation is at stake; to interest an Englishman in war there is nothing like putting it into his head that war is a boxing match."' Dearly indeed did England pay for her idolatry. It was said before the war that Spionkop had been lost ..on the playing fields of Eton, and to-day one might add Gallipoli. Put there are valuable, and indeed priceless, entries on the credit side, and it is well that this news from France should remind us of them. If devotion to sport hampered the English in some directions in the task of fashioning la great army and waging war, it helped them in others. Many a young man learnt the business the more quickly because he had been a good footballer .or cricketer. It made him think rapidly i in emergencies, and taught him to adapt himself to circumstances. It was largely because they had been trained in the ' habits and traditions of games that the : English airmen were so markedly superior, man to man, to the Germans. The beneficial effect of games on character was clearly illustrated. These same habits and traditions helped the English to bear both adversity and" success with equanimity. They went to the .fashioning of that equable temper, that high average level of moral, and that extraordinary cheerfulness in discomfort and danger, which were characteristics of both the British nation and the British Army. It was partly the sense of fair- • play that comes from sport that made the Englishman slow to hate, and he was probably no worse a fighter on that account. It is interesting to speculate what the German, who exhibited from first to last all the qualities of a bad sportsman, would have been like had he been brought tip to play games. He would have been less brutal, less arro--1 gant, less self-centred, and his sense of humour would have been less rudimentary. He might have been "an even more formidable opponent than he was, S, in that his mind might have been more , clastic, quicker to adapt itself to new circumstances than it was in the days that ended in the defeat of the Marne. His moral might have been less rigid and brittle. Admiral Percy Scott throws a light on this question when he mentions that on a visit to Germany before the war he noticed that the only recreations of German naval officers were drink and dissipation. More wholesome recreation among officers and men, especially if it had bridged the gap between the ranks, might have prevented or mitigated the final humiliation. England would have I gone to war better prepared if she had given more time to thought and less to sport, but Germany -would probably have been harder to defeat, _nd certainly would not so completely lave incurred the odium of the civilised world, if she had thought less and played more. The Lwar has confirmed the, old moderate . I view of games, that they are invaluable for improving physique, building character, combating vice, teaching chivalry i. and rubbing the corners off men—it is noteworthy- that most extreme pacifists have no interest in sport —but that they R must not be considered the end of life.