FINDING THE BALANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 234, 2 October 1937, Page 3 (Supplement)

FINDING THE BALANCE.

MY friend Doris was a thoughtful woman, struggling along behind three great sons she was attempting to bring up. She was a welleducated woman, well read and intelligent; and the attitude of her boys—so different from her own—was too much for her. "They think of sport," she said, "and of nothing else. They know the life history and ancestry of every racehorse that ever ran in this country; they know all about the cricket, and the receht Rugby match just wiped everything else out of their minds. They are preparing for the yachting season. They spend their winters in the mud playing football, and their summers on the sea, sailing. Everything that interferes with their sport is waste of time, and they take no interest whatever in the world all about them."

I pointed out they were no different from thousands of other boys in the country. New Zealand put great emphasis on sport. Someone had even suggested that we should have a Minister of Sport! It was always in the news. The daily papers could be relied on to give the first four headings on their posters to racing, Rugby, cricket and yachting, and the fifth to some event that was shaking the world to its foundations. We are a sports-minded country. "They think I'm old and fusty," she said, "just because I want to see sport taking a secondary place. I believe it should. As relaxation, as a means of finding balance, sport has its. place in life. But as the most important activity of all—it is all wrong. Take John now —my eldest boy. He has a dreadful record at school. I'm ashamed of him. He is third from the bottom of his form. But when I complained he opened his eyes wide, and asked what I could expect —he was in the first fifteen, the first eleven, and could box along the best of them! His brothers backed him up. and assured me he was one of the most popular boys in the school. I spoke to his teacher." and he said John was a good fellow—that any boy who was good a sport as John need cause his parents no anxiety. But what is he going to do with his life?" I tried to reassure her. Perhaps she was worrying unduly. It was just a phase that would pass. But she said it was not. John was 15, and hie mind was like a child's.

"He knows nothing about the world he lives in," she eaid. "History, geography, economics, "the growth of the present world out of the past one—they mean nothing. How is he going to earn his living? We send him to school to equip him for manhood —to enable him to take hie place in a world of grown-up people and serious activity. But when we point thi« out to him he laughs, and saw we are blind to the things that count. Has he not a perfect physique ? Is he not fit? Has he not strength and health and endurance? What do we want— a bookworm with anaemia and jellyfish of the spine?" ft was a very real problem to Doris, and I felt sorry for her. They were just imbued with the Greek ideal, I said—

The Part Sport Plays. PROBLEM OP YOUTH. (By SHIRLEY DAY.)

beautiful bodies as the foundation for balanced, clean minds. She sliook her head. How long, she asked, had the Greeks existed 011 athletics? We would go the same way —be wiped off the map by some country that realised that man couldn't live by sport alone. Life was 100 easy for us to-day. We were overfed, had too much leisure, and played like children while the serious business of the world was being done hy other nations. Where was it going to lead us ? There was Japan, for instance, out for the world's markets while we wanted the glory of playing the best Rugby in the world. How 7 long could we just sit back on the work of our sturdy ancestors, who had conquered seas and strange lands, and planted an empire? The day would come . . .

There was a great honking at the gate, and she couldn't say any more for the noise. It was John and the two other boys called for her with their "car"—a shining tin affair, assembled out of spare parts. The last I saw of her was when she tried to call something back to me, and one of the boys put an arm round her neck to keep her from falling out. The bus roared" up the street like a traction engine and I was left to wonder how much truth there was in her fears.