THE GAME OF LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 19764, 14 January 1928, Page 12

THE GAME OF LIFE

■ DOERS OR LOOKERS-ON A SCHOOLMASTER’S VIEWS KEEPING THE RULES. In one sense the scene at an Association football cup final is a microcosm, a revelation of the world of men in miniature. There we set twenty-two men doing something, and as many thousands looking on—twenty-two makers and twenty-two thousand spectators j there may bo many reasons for this disproportion, not certainly in the control of the majority, and the fault may lie elsewhere; but fault it is. and the spectacle'ls not edifying, for let it be remembered that the twenty-two alone are playing the game, writes Mr M. L. Jacks, head master of Mill Hill School, in the ‘ St. Martin’s Review.’ So it is in life. Those only play the game of life who spend all their time in doing—not only the time when they are nominally “at work,’’ but also the time when they are their own masters, free to exercise a healthy activity or to indulge a lazy passivity, to recreate themselves or to stand still, or to undo the fibres of their spiritual being. And these doers are a diminishing host. During those searching yfcars between 1914 and 1918 -here was a universal desire to be doing something, and no being was more unhappy than that man, woman, or responsible child who, through age or natural infirmity, was compelled to be inactive; the man beyond the age limit or in class C 3. the woman bound by condition..) which allowed her no release, the boy or girl old enough to understand but young enough to bo at school—these were to be pitied. But where lias gone that fever and fervor? Whither has vanished the gleam? For in these “piping ” times of peace there is little of such general craving for activity, and men are more ready to rest than to do. And yet the calls to action are, I believe, no whit loss insistent and the field narrower by not an inch. Perhaps the cause lies partly in the greater difficulty of hearing the call and of discerning the field, when there is no immediate and overwhelming threat, excluding all other interests, when there is no battlefield shutting out the view of every other field. But the cause lies, too, in something more material than this. Since the beginning of the century, and particularly since the war, we have been living in a world which makes it increasingly easy to live and yet lie a looker-on. LOOKING BACKWARDS In the old flays, when households were self-supporting, when villages were cut o fflrom the main stream of life, when there were few books and fewer newspapers, when there were no cinemas and only occasional visits of strolling players for amusement—in those days a man was thrown back on himself, not only for earning a livelihood for his body, but also for earning a livelihood for his soul; and this latter he did by developing, some hobby which perhaps became a village industry, by fashioning beautiful things, by making poems, by dancing on the village green. So was he likely to be a doer not only while he went forth to his labors in the

daytime, but also when the night came and no man could work—no, not work, but enjoy an active and a recreative leisure. Now all that has changed. Newspapers are within the reach of all, and newspapers which provide mattei adapted to the needs of the laziest in the form most easily apprehended; often it happens that nobody need read further than the headline; he who runs may read—and if he does he reads sensational paragraphs which cost northing to grasp and leave nothing to work on. The cheapest, and therefore the most accessible books, are generally the cheapest not only in price, but in real value; recent statistics from many public libraries tell a depressing tale in this respect, but the records of. the few libraries, where attempts have been made to combat the disease of the best seller, reveal that this tale need never have been told; the fault is not in ourselves, but in our star writers, and in the placid assumption of those who arc responsible for the literature that reaches us that we can enjoy no star of greater magnitude. SOMETHING TO “ BITE ON.” So is it, too, with the cinema, and to a lesser degree with the theatre. Both are fraught with boundless possibilities for good, for giving us something to “ bite on,” for providing us with materia] for the exercise of our intellectual and spiritual powers—exercise which is a form of doing. But they fail. The theatre sometimes, the cinema very rarely does this for us. The tendency is- all the other way—to help us to pass an idle hour, idle because the spectacle on which we are invited to look makes no demand on any part of us, and calls forth no activity of any sorb; and the tragedy of it all is that the more occupations there are offered for an idle hour, the more idle hours there will be to occupy. The criticism here is a criticism ot quality; newspapers, books, theatres, cinemas—they are all potentially good, but they fail to fufil their potentiality; the newspaper is folded up, the last chapter is read, the curtain falls on the final act, the lights go up in the cinema palace, and the man should go home to his bed more of a man; the written word should have led him to read new depths in human life, the spoken play to hear the more solemn music of existence, the moving picture should have moved him nearer to the goal of his spiritual being. In each instance he should, have been compelled “to do something about it”; hut usually the doing is all done for him. The whole of life tends to become a cinema show. The development of wireless telephony brings us to another aspect of the danger. It is remarkable and praiseworthy that the wireless programmes should have maintained so high a standard of real value (and that these programmes are welcomed is further evidence, added to that of the good public libraries, that the depressing tale need never be told). But there is danger here, too, though it is a more general danger and mor« subtle in its attack. .' ! It is sometimes better to. do a litth thing than to listen to a big one ; and' there are innumerable small duties-to be done, duties of socia.l intercourse, duties to a family, duties to a sick friend, which arc in danger of being postponed and ultimately .of . being omitted by the habit of listening-in. Our hearing of the word—whether conveyed to us through the medium, of printed page, drama, or broadcastermust never be a substitute (as it often is) for action. “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. The deceit lies in the belief that to be a hearer, a lookeron, is to live. “ The man that standeth idle.” said Brother Giles, “ loses this world ahf( the next; for he brings forth no fruit in himself, and profits not his neighbor.”