The Menace of Money in Games

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 291, 4 September 1926, Page 15

The Menace of Money in Games

Sport Rests Upon Moral and Spiritual Foundations

Except for vague references, sport is not often dealt with from the pulpit. In a fine sermon, however, the Rev. T. H. Martin, M.A., preaching recently at Crosby Congregational Church, dealt with the moral side of games. Mr. Martin pleaded from a courageous and original point of view, and those who read his discourse will not be inclined to dispute cither its logic or its truth.

11 E have been told often tliat industry and art rest on moral and J spiritual foundations, but we have not yet realised that sport %A / docs i llst as mucll, the cslaracter an(l I,ealth or decline y V ■of a nation is visible in the tracery of its windows, and the quality of its fabrics, it is no less visible in the manner and quality of its sport,” said Mr. Martin. “The pulse of national life can be felt upon the cricket field even more readily than upon the Royal Exchange or House of Commons. The atmosphere is clearer there. Men are not so selfish and not such partisans there. Manhood has a better chance of expressing itself, and chivalrous dealing and healthy mindedness are more readily disclosed. Sport opens men out. Trade shuts them in. Sport makes them communicative, confiding, frank. Trade tends to make them secretive, furtive, reticent. “We have been called to our disparagement a nation of shopkeepers, but this, at any rate, is true—England is the home of sport, and to our links and playing fields come the champions of every country in the world. No one who wins in Australia or America or S. Africa is satisfied until they have also won at Lord’s or Wimbledon or Sunningdale. “We have taught the nations how to play. Spain is playing football instead of watching bull fights. Germany is introducing games instead of military service. We have taught France tennis, and America golf and polo, and Australia and Africa cricket and football. Now they can beat us at out own games, and this past week has seen our leading golfers hopelessly outplajed. It is making us think. Why do so many trophies go off to America? “Why can’t we build and sail yachts and play golf and polo as well as they do? At the last Olympic games we only won 854 points to America: 255! There are more people there, of course—three times as many as here. Fresh blood is continually vitalising the nation. Wc know also that there is always an exhilaration in challenging an established record. But somehow oi other they have gained over there a spirit of determination and concentration and a will to succeed, which we lack. “We have nothing to fear from materialism as a philosophy of life, bu we have everything to fear from it as a practice of life, and in nothing so muc as sport. “Here, too, the spirit of mercenaries is menacing the real spirit of th game. Many good sportsmen are beginning to realise tliat there arc too man. prizes, too much money in the sweepstakes, to be healthy. When captains an elected for the money they can spend, and games are played only for the prize •-hat are won, true sport degenerates and dies out. The sportsman gives place to the tout, the pot-hunter, and the bookmaker. “Money is the curse of sport, taints, corrupts, and kills it. To play for money at any game and feel the game is not worth playing without it is the most disgusting motive that can enter into sport. It means that the lore of sport for sport’s sake has gone, and the loathsome love of greed and gain lias taken its place.

“In olden days when people had to hire mercenaries to fight their battles it was sure sign that their days were numbered, and when clubs become big financial companies paying dividends and hiring players, and competing for them by offering higher wages, the days of real sport are over. This is the danger we have to to watch and fight all the time. The love of money is the root of all evil, says St. James. It is more than ever true and as true of sport as of trade and commerce. “We must do everything in our power to keep sport clean and strong, and free it from every contaminating touch of selfishness and greed. We must teach children what true sport is, and what it has done to exalt our nation. It is the playing of the game which has made Britain what it is. Since the days of Drake and Frobisher, and Sir Philip Sydney, and Nelson and Napier and Havelock the playing of the game has passed into the blood of our people. Our Universities and schools have been the guardians of it, and set the standaids of it which are accepted by the world. “We judge of peoples and of men by the way they play the game in trade, in sport, in everything. And now we have to go to other peoples and ask them to teach us, not only because there is none among us that can skill to hew timber like unto them, but none among us that can skill to win games. ‘When a nation is at its best it is its spirit that plays.’ And the spirit will not be the spirit that thinks of money or dreams of gam; neither will it be the spirit of the gambler and the mercenary. “The spirit that makes true sport and produces great sportsmen hates the thought of greed or money-making. It . makes men play for the game's sake, and play with the best in them, not the worst in them engaged. Every ‘.rue sportsman ought to take a solemn vow that English sport shall uphold the honour of the games. In the long run it will be that which will save he nation not only upon the games field but in trade and politics as well. “We have led the world so far. In many things we lead it still. M e ave the spirit of the game in oifr blood. It is in every school and college and diversity. It is on every village green. It is the spirit of honour, of :hivalry,- of magnanimity, of winning fairly and losing cheerfully. From every orner of the earth men and women come to play on our links and fields, and ow on our rivers, and in no wise can we do more or do better for the Christ ve worship and serve than by showing that His spirit is there to skill us to play the game fairly and well, giving us courage and daring, making us true men, true sportsmen, true gentlemen. “Let us pray again: ‘Give us, good Lord, the gifts of Galilee, the gifts ■f gaiety and freedom, simplicity; to make our tired world grow young again. Pour Thy spirit more and more into the life of men, giving us clean laughter, good sportsmanship, kindness, generosity, and gentleness, honour, courtesy, and self control, that wc may all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ? ”