SPORT AND CHARACTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 49, 27 February 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

SPORT AND CHARACTER.

WORLD NEEDS LEADERSHIP. I The "New Zealand Congregational ! Monthly" reprints an article by Sir j Philip Gibbs, the novelist, from the "New York Times." in which he putsome searching questions. "Ts not this age of ours." be asks, "careless of intellectual achievements ■while it gives too much hero worship to motor experts who risk their lives on long-distance flights; to plump ladies •who grease their bodies and swim an awfully long way; to chunk-headed lads who can hit a ball further than most others or give a quick uppercut to the jowl of a pugilist; to any tennis champion who calls himself an amateur, but devotes the hours of sunlight to a game •which was once played more prettily by ladies in bustles, and to record-breakers of all kinds who have some special quality of nerve, or wind, or muscle, or cardiac action? .... That's the most unpopular question that any writer could ask in cold print. Glare of Publicity. "In any public restaurant any one of these people would cause a sensation if pointed out to the company. Their achievements are applauded by great crowds. Their photographs are in every illustrated paper. They have to harden themselves to the glare of publicity.

"There would he no sensatim in a public restaurant if someone pointed out Sir Ernest Rutherford, the greatest physicist, perhaps, in the world to-day, or Frederick Soddy, the great chemist, although their discoveries have revealed many mysteries in Nature and are of profound importance to the future of science. Walter de la Mare and John Drink water cannot compete in popularity with Donoghue, the jockev, or Hobbs, the cricketer, although they have written verses that travel further than any racehorse or cricket ball towards the Elysian fields. "Outside the circle of Terr small groups of scholars and students few English people have heard of William Maodougall or Dr. William Brown, the biggest men to-day in mental philosophy and human psychology. They are building bridges between this life and eternity. They are studying the mechanism of the mind and reaching out toward the supernormal senses. Thev are, anyhow, trying to find a chie to the philosophy of life by which men and women may get nearer to truth. Rather futile work, as one must admit. Who wants to get nearer to truth when it 16 so important to get nearer to the racetrack or the ring?

How Leaders are Produced. "What are we going to do about it? We ought to 'do something about it because the world is desperately in need of leadership at the present time, and, in my humble judgment, we can't afford to wait very long for a general increase in intelligence without risking some very unpleasant consequences, which may spoil sport and break up the game of youth and make even recordbreakers seem rather negligible, because science is putting new powers into the hands of mankind which will make a mess of things unless our mentality and our morality rise to the same heights of power and control them for the use humanity destruCtio » of j s > 1 that we cannot get great leadership if we don't want V . ders are produced by the spirit est^ e, i r n a if a e ' and ° Ur agC iS mOStl -T interested m haying a good time at all costs ti ° U&ht " «