SHADOW AND LIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 144, 20 June 1934, Page 6

SHADOW AND LIGHT.

The affair Larwood drags its weary and unhappy way along, to the disturbance of the national sense of proportion and the confusion of good fellowship. Larwood's foot has become as important as King Edward's appendicitis, and his words seem to carry as much news value as Mussolini's pronouncements. Something, however, has been decided. Larwood will not play for England this week, and presumably will not appear at all in the series. It is a pity, for he is certainly the best fast bowler in the world, if not the first of all bowlers, and England sorely needs him; but a principle is at stake, and the selection committee have no option but to abide by it. Apparently Larwood has been told, as a condition of playing, either that he must not bowl "body-line" or that he must submit to the captain's authority, and he declines. After what has happened in Australia and in the councils of the M.C.C., the committee is obliged to take this stand; even if there had been no specific dispute, a player would still be bound, by the practice of the game, to obey his captain. The situation is not improved by the position of Press critic that Jardine has accepted. As captain of the side in Australia, Jardine is largely responsible for the trouble that has arisen, and that he should now sit in public judgment on his successor in the captaincy shows a certain lack of sensitiveness, which may help to explain why he was not a favourite in Australia. However, all is by no means shadow in the field of the tests. While England has fought against misfortune, and Larwood has trailed the pageant of his bleeding heart through the Press,, the Australian criminal has been so much absorbed in the test drama that he has almost ceased to worry the police. It is a gratifying and encouraging spectacle—the burglar and the pickpocket and the artist in the illegitimate use of the razor, forgetting their avocations in the thrill of listening, not to the brook a-gurgling or to the village chime —as W. S. Gilbert depicts their English prototypes doings—but to the sound of ball against bat at the other side of the world. There is here another object-lesson in social progress. Give men interests and occupation and they will be less likely to commit antisocial acts. This is one of the clearest conclusions to be drawn from social developments during the last hundred years. Brutal punishments did not lessen crime in the army, but education and facilities for recreation did.' The cinema is much blamed for its bad effect on morals, but do the critics consider what its patrons might be doing if I they were without this recreation?