Games and the Sabbath.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14908, 23 February 1914, Page 6

Games and the Sabbath.

"Whether or not healthful and harmless games should be played on Sundays is a question which no amount of discussion—and it has been discussed often enough—has succeeded in staling. Tho difficulties which, by hiding the right answer, keep tho subject fresh, were made very plain in an interesting dobate by the Victoria College Council on "Wednesday on tho application of tho students for permission to play on Sundays on the College tonnis-courte. Sir Robert Stout came out very strongly in favour of granting the application of the students, bub his logio did not prevent his being in a 'hopeless minority on a division. The majority of the Council (tho voting was seven to three) took the Hon. A. L. Herdman's view. His view, he said, and that of the Professorial Board, was not that the playing of. tennis on Sunday was objectionable in itself, but that "on a piece of " ground attached to a public institution tho playing of tennis might bo "offensive, and somo regard should be " paid to the views of peoplo likely to "be offended.'? -Sir Robert Stout's nnswer'to this was that it involved tho doctrine that '-tho limit of our liberty "is the opinion of tho minority." Ho ia a famously shrewd dialectician, and his opponents wisely refused • that thorny hedge and rode through Mr Herdman's gate. But even there Sir Robert erected somo stout rails of logic. "I don't understand," he said, "why peoplo can bo offended. "We " run trams on Sunday, and excursions " to I>ay's Bay, and the excursions are "crowded. Go across to Ihiy's Bay.

"Tennis is played thero, and no objection is taken." Hβ reminded the Conncil also that (reading-rooms, museums, and art galleries are open on Sundays, and that members of tho Council go to Miramar or Heretaunga for Sunday golf. We cannot but admit that all the- logic appears to bo with the Chancellor, but most people will feel that this is another case in which it is wisdom to follow the peculiarly Anglo-Saxon custom of defying logic when ■it stands in the way of a judicious compromise. Logically, there is no more harm in playing tennis in public in a city on Sunday than in playing golf in the country, out of the nay of the public. But that can bo admitted by the Victoria College Council without weakening their case. . For (hoir case rests on tho fact that Sunday sport is not in tho category "of "self-regarding" things. Thero are many things which are proper or objectionable, according to circumstances, and according to whether they do not or do affront public sentiment or the feelings of others. It is a safe rule tc respect public opinion while seeking to educate it, and public opinion is for the present, rightly or wrongly, op-

•fv;<?(l to such public sport as that ■which the Victoria Colleges Council has vetoed. It tolerates private tennis and golf in the country oji Sundays, but it does not approve public games played in such circumstances that they offend a considerable, minority. In time Sir Robert Stout may see public opinion come into line with his logic— all theso questions settle themselves in time—but in the meantime the minority, whose sensibilities do eet a limit to our liberty, must wherever possible be given the benefit of the doubt. For public opinion is just as likely ultimately to extend its veto as to remove it wholly, where Sunday

eport is concerned*

The latest plea put forward on behalf of the tango is rather surprising. It is seriously defended in New York as a powerful agent in the promotion of temperance. Many people, the London "Telegraph's" correspondent declares, have remarked "that thcro has been a great deal less 'swigging and guzzling' during the Christmas holidays than in any previous year, because Tangoing and Turkey-trotting on slippery floors are quite inconsistent with the aforesaid swigging and guzzling." Hotelkeepers and restaurateurs in the big cities, we are told, report a material decrease in wine-drink-ing during the festive season, and this result is credited to the much anatnematised dance. Tho opponents of the danco insist, however, that tho decline in the receipts of the wine-sellers is simply due to the general dulness of trade, and they arguo that "if ragtime were really a temperance agent in disguise, tho licensed victnallors of the metropolis would have resisted the invasion from the first." Bat what licensed victualler would havo "spotted" the tango as a great moral agency?

Cradley Heath, which figured in our cable news on Saturday owing to the main street having collapsed, is notorious as the homo of chain-mak-ing by women. The work of these women has been called the classic sweated trade, and perhaps there has been nothing in British industry of which British civilisation has more need to be ashamed, than the conditions under which these women worked a few years ago. Women worked as blacksmiths for twelve to sixteen hours a day for ljd an hour! Tho industry was the first to which the Trades Board Act passed by the present Government applied. The Board set up under the Act fixed the minimum wage for these women at 2Jd an hour. Nearly all the chain-making in the United Kingdom is localised in this portion of tho Black Country, the reason being that tho district produces a non-sulphurous coal peculiarly suitable for the hand-forg-dng of chains.

Tho libel action which has ended in a verdict of £2000 damages against the late Permanent Under-Secretary for War will have' brought the system of confidential reports prominently before the public It is the custom in the Army for officers of certain ranks to report confidentially on subordinates, and these reports naturally affect tho promotion and prospects of the officers concerned. Some such system is necessary for efficiency, but, apparently, until quite recently the officers reported on were exposed to too great a risk of injustice. By an Order issued by the Army Council last year an officer is not only allowed to see the report made on him, but is required to initial it as evidence that he has read it. If ho thinks his superiors aro biased by personal disliko or that their criticisms are unsupported by evidence, he has a right to complain to the authorities about their attitude. The War Office must in most cases be guided by the reports of responsible officers, but this case has shown that the officers reported on have rights as regards tho publication of confidential matter.

Tt is happily not often nowadays that churches aro violated by the shedding of blood within their .walls, as happened this week in Seville, where a soldier committed suicide in tho Cathe-. dral. The Cathedral lias been closod pending its re-consecration. In a village church in England last month, Iho sexton hanged himself in tho belfry, and a special service of "reconciliation" was rendered necessary. Such services, which wero always held when there was any "effusion of blood" in a church or churchyard, wore common enough in the Middle Ages, when people were rather more fond of brawling than they are now. "Such however," wo road, "was the popular ingratitudo for the service thus performed that the parishioners sometimes declined to pay the necessary dues, and then they were accustomed to be smartly dealt with. Occasionally, indeed, they attempted to return in very literal fashion, blow for blow, as, for instanco, when they first chased an ecclesiastical bailiff into church and then dragged him out and slashed him with swords. Not one among the crowd found it possible to identify the assailants, whereupon was pronounced a general sentence of excommunication, with the church itself placed under an interdict, from which it was not released until 'the ringleader and charioteer of the rebels' had submitted to ecclesiastical discipline and been absolved." In some respects wo have certainly improved on the customs of our tempestuous ancestors.

A cablo message in a recent issue reported that a meteor fell into the sea with a loud report close to a liner. Wβ wonder if anybody on board remembered a similar incident in cno of Clark Russell's stories. The man at tho wheel of a- sailing vessel was found one night lying unconscious on the deck, with an ugly wound on his head. .The affair was a mystery until 6omeono found on tho deck a small dark object, which turned out to bo a meteorite. The most unlikely part of tho story is the recovery of the man; even a 6inall meteorite, ono would think, would inflict mortal injuries if it struck a man on tbo.head. But tho experience of the liner shows once more that there are perils of sea-travel against which all man's precautions are in vain. Some of tho meteors that have struck the earth would have had onerev cnouch to wreck tho largest vessel ever built.

When wo asked for. the n-th time the other day for some of the "strong evidences"' of the "revulsion of feeling" in favour of "Liberalism," our Opposition friends, feeling pprhans that they must say something, quoted what they said was the, voting strength of tho parties at tho polls in 1911. it seemod to us that these figures were delightfully irrelevant to our query, wo took occasion to correct tho fantastic statistics presented to us. We are now told that we arrived at our own figures by disregarding all seats not contested by Reformers and by "reckoning as Reformers the Liberal voters whose members changed sides after the resignation of Sir Joseph "Ward." Aβ to the second point, wo did not reckon any of these "Liberal voters" as Reformers. As to the other point, wo gave the full totals, disregarding nothing, but we pointed out that to get at the right proportion, one should disregard the constituencies in which cither the Government or t'ae Reform Party were pot represented. "What onr friends are seeking to console themselves with, is s> eefc of figures

based on the assumption that there are no supporters of the Government in Grey and Lvttelton. They must either (1) admit that there were Reformers there in 1911, and that their figures are worthless, or (2) insist that there were no Reformers there in 1911, from which it would follow that a quite short spell of Reform administration won over to Reform thousands of people in each electorate.