The Dominion. TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1908. ATHLETICS AND NATIONHOOD.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 88, 7 January 1908, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1908. ATHLETICS AND NATIONHOOD.

One expected accompaniment of the current cricket campaign in Australia is strangely missing. No one lias risen up to address the public, absorbed in averages and "flicks" and rich "partnerships," upon the grave pferil which the abnormal cult of games contains for Anglo-Saxqndom. Why the warning voice is silent we cannot.'understand, for it surely could not find a more opportune moment for speech or circumstances better devised to support its arguments. It is the dull season, from a news point of view, and thero is nothing in the serious regions of life to distract the public's attention from the English cricketers. Nothing in our cable news can hope for so large an audience, or for one so deeply interested, as the messages chronicling the progress of the Test Matches. It is possible that the phenomenon which we have been describing is evidence of a _ reaction _ from the fashion which Kipling assisted to set when he wrote of flannelled fools and muddied oafs. could be filled with the antigame articles and pamphlets that have been written since "The Islanders" set England arguing. That there is, indeed, something like a reaction towards tolerance is discernible from occasional articles in the better-class magazines and newspapers in America. Nobody has ever denied, of course, that the bodily exercise of its citizens determines the health of a nation, or that the cultivation of games, and especially of a national game which shall call for endurance, vigour and fitness in its devotees, is as valuable to a nation to-day as the training of the young Spartan of old was to the country of Agesilaus. The only exception that we can call to mind at this momont is G. Bernard Shaw, who, with a conscientious contrariness, says in " Who's Who " that his " recreations" are " anything but sport." As it is always pleas,inter to read of the good things in'a human institution than the bad ones, it is a real relief to find the case for games set out in an article in the " North American Review." The writer, Mr. Archibald E. Colquhoun, discusses the propaganda that is being carried on for the racial unification of the Slav pcoplcs : in the Ilapsburg realm and in Europe _ Instead of leagues at which politicians address audiences in

tiresome speeches, the pan-Slav propagandists rely upon a system of gymnastic societies known as " Sokols."

Branches, numbering over a thousand, aro established in nil Slav countries, and in, communities of Slavs in foreign countries like Germany, Franco, and the United States. In 1907 they held a meeting at Irague, which .23,000 of. all nationalities attended (500 from Arrierica), and manauvrod in a manner which surprised the Austrian and Russian staff ofiicers who were Present. In 1885, when Bulgaria threw off tho Russian tutelage, there was no native organisation save the Sokols, which, however, numbered 40,000 men, all trained and disciplined, and largely helped to save the situation. . . They oxhibit an amount of organising and concentrating power at varlfinc.e with tho accepted cliaractcr of the Slavs.

A Eussian who was present at the Prague gathering was so impressed by tins nation-making machine that he declared that if Russia had developed a system of" Sokols," she would have had a constitutional government before to-day. A parallel to the Slav employment of athletics for political purposes is to be found in south-western Austria, where. the Italians maintain their own system of gymnastic - societies as much for the. acquisition by Italy of Trieste and the Tyrol as for recreation and health purposes. It was in Germany, however, that the political value of athletics was first discovered. The discoverer was Friedrich Vilhelm Jahn, who, after the fateful battle, of Jena, thought out a System rof gymnastic training for the salvation of the German nation. To this growth of the gymnasium movement the overthrow of the Napoleonic domination is attributed, and we all know that the intense " nationalism" of Germany of to-day can find its origin in the gymnasia of the empire. . One cannot generalise from these examples beyond a, certain point. ' Perhaps the " Sokols " of the Slavs are not the cause, but an effect, of the enthusiastic pain-Slavonic spirit. In Germany, too, it might be urged, the nation was destined ,to overthrow the Napoleonic 'domination, and tlie 'gymnasium movement , was merely the efflorescence , of the nation-making qualities of the German people. To urge, therefore, that the game of cricket, peculiarly British in its, origin and m itsi practice, and cultivated to-day almost with revorence in 'England, South Africa, and Australia, is a' kind of " Empire cement," would be to go beyond the authority of facts. Safer it would be to say 'that, .'because the Empire is possessed by a spirit of unity, its parts challenge each/other to play cricket and football. In America many people are. anxious to believe, that, the college athlete is the destined Perseus who will rescue the national Andromeda from the monster of corruption and _ unscrupulous materialism. They point with some pride to - the fact that a recently elected * Milwaukee county judge gained his position on " his star record as a halfback," as, but for a sudden timorousness amongst the people concerned, we might ourselves have been, pointings to the Mayor of Wauganui as an official elected upon his record as an oarsman. The proposal i recently made that a cricket tournament< between England, South Africa, and. Australia should be held periodically is ' probably impracticable'.. ,;But; it is opyxto imagine the valuable effect which such a tourney would have ineou centra ting the attention of the Imperial public upon a very stimulating and ■ suggestive spectacle. The Empire is not to be saved by kicking goals and hitting- " fourers," but it is not unpleasant to know that in the cricket and football organisations th'e Empire has something not unlike the "Sokols" that are claimed to be making the . Slavs into a great nation.