BRAWN OR BRAINS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 121, 20 February 1928, Page 6

BRAWN OR BRAINS

RELIGION AND THE CULT OF SPORT EXPENDITURE ON SOCIAL GRATIFICATION Dominion Special Service. x. Christchurch, February 17. “Religion is the most precious and potent investment any country can make and yet it is the most poorly supported,” declared the Rev. W. J. Elliott in the course of his presidential address to delegates attending the Dominion Methodist Conference. “A careful consultation w.ith competent authorities enabled us to record that a moderate estimate of the annual cost of religion to this country is £1,410,600. This is less than one pound per head of the population, and when we compare it with the extravagant sum of money spent on sport and self-indulgence, the contrast should cover us with shame and confusion of face. “Leaving out of account for the moment the annual cost of racing and liquor, we are spending on sport every twelve months the huge sum of £l,270,000, and when the expenditure of racing and liquor is included we are confronted with the colossal sum of £21,270,000 per annum. It is a conservative estimate, and if we generously deduct from the total amount _ £2,000,000 spent on liquor for niddicinal and mechanical purposes, we are still left with an unjustifiable expenditure for social gratification. “After fifty years of fervent sympathy with all forms of recreation, one is compelled to say that to-day the cult of the body is being overdone at the expense of the cult of the mind and the heart. Pleasure is a preservative against the corroding power that takes away the zest of life, but we must discourage that extreme devotion to sport as sport which is operating against the real business of life. In the silent watches of the night manv a parent must secretly regret'the tendency of modern scholasticism to pander to that passion for sport that runs so naturally in the blood of the nation. There is danger in the ominous tendency to overlook the scholar and to consider only the ‘sport.’ To-dav, with us, when a person dies in this Dominion the first personal reference often is ‘Deceased was a good sportsman.’ The typical New Zealander is a splendid animal, but he has. to be trained to superb manhood, and it cannot be done while he is obsessed with pleasure by day and by night. , The Grecian love of athletics did not give an inferior place to the historian and the poet, but we are in danger of reversing the clasic order. “It. is the man of brains who advances his country rather than the man of brawn. That superiority is the common experience of all climes and countries. . Agamemnon dies, but Homer lives for' ever. England is great because of .Shakespeare and Watt, rather than because of Wellington and Dr. Grace. No nation has ever yet remained supreme by force of arms or feats of physical agility. Faith is of incomparably greater importance than football, and Bible reading than boxing, though there is no reason why they should not blend in useful proportion. Therefore, moderation in the appetite for sport is as necessary as a moderation in the appetite for anything else.”