COLONEL BOGEY

Evening Star, Issue 20226, 13 July 1929, Page 2

COLONEL BOGEY

Colonel Bogev is a mythical gentleman who haunts golf links and is familiar to most players. Wo do not quite know the origin of the name. The dictionary . defines Bogey as a spectre, hobgoblin, bugbear, and derives it from , a Welsh word which means threatening or fear. But what is the significance of Colonel? How did it get attached to the bogey in golfers’ parlance? We don’t know. Perhaps some learned golfer will enlighten us. But we know what Colonel Bogey stands- for. He is an ideal personage, supposed to play the game perfectly, making no mistakes; and at the end of the game you check .up your score against his, and so determine what success you have had. Your rank as a player is not measured by your success over this or that opponent; for they may bo poor players, just beginning, perhaps, and so to win over them would mean nothing as to your standing in the game. It is Colonel Bogey you must measure up against. It is Colonel Bogey who is the final judge of your standing on the golf course. * * * * Now, ever since Huxley’s memorable illustration it is a commonplace saying that life is a game in winch all are engaged, and it has occurred to us that that of golf throws considerable light on the motives and methods of the game of life. In his golfing days it was the good—or bad—fortune of the present writer, for reasons which he need not specify, to have to play mostly with Colonel Bogey. But is there not a Colonel Bogey within us all, against which we are constantly measuring ourselves up? We are all conscious of a good and a bad, a high and a lower, a better and a worse. Wo are conscious of this sec-saw in our thoughts, desirt/s, actions. It goes on all day and all night as long as w© are awake, and even in dreams. It makes us at times glad, and other times sad or mad. Some scientists have succeeded in producing what has been called “a diabolical fad.” They have grafted one insect on the body of another, as, c.g , a butterfly on a spider. The grafting is done when the creatures aro in the pupa state. It is easy to imagine, then, the dash of irreconcilable impulses and instincts, “ a passion for the sunshine and the love of darkness, a longing for roses and a thirst for blood; the creature perplexed within itself, afraid of itself, devouring itself.” Is it not a grim picture on a small scale of what seems to manifest itself in human nature? There is this same clash of opposite instincts and desires—the same upward push of wings and the downward fall towards earth and the darkness. How many have put it into words!

0 for the man to arise in me, That the man 1 am might cease to be 1 Or away back long ago in the poignant cry of one whom the contest had laid in tho dust: “ 0 wretched man that 1 am, who shall deliver mo from the body of this death?” It is the presence of this Colonel Bogey within us all that will not let us be satisfied with ourselves. Sometimes, indeed, people lose sight of tho Colonel Bogey inside them, dodge him, refuse to measure themselves up against him. But that way lio death and dismay. As Browning says:— What were life Did soul stand still therein, forgo, her strife Through tho ambiguous Present to the goal Of some all-reconciling Future? So it is good to recognise and keep on good terms with the Colonel Bogey within us. We never see him any more than wo see him on the golf links. He is an elusive figure. When wc think we have done well and go up with our score to where we imagined he was waiting for us, lo! he lias moved up a bit higher. So he tantalises, allures us oil, and with every higher advance we make the vision of a higher rises before us at onco difficult and therefore fascinating.

But it is not good to live too much measuring up ourselves against the Colonel Bogey within ns. In other words it is wise to compare our own ideals with those of others outside us. Here again in every sphere of life wc encounter Colonel Bogey, Every sphere of life is haunted by the ideal—the something higher than what has been achieved. We are all too ready to conform ourselves to the easiest and the lowest of ideals. That is much tho same as if we should measure our standing in golf by the poorest of the competitors against which we play. We shall never attain to any distinction in the game by that method. And still less in the game of life. Yet that is what we frequently do. For instance, in the matter of books and reading, how many do not choose the best possible, only the cheapest; those that will require from us no mental exorcise, or even those that appeal to i the senses and the animal side of our j nature. For it is one of the direst of j dangers that we can exercise the im- 1 agination and have the secret thrills of evil ideas and deeds that, if worked , out into actual life, would shame and confound us. The same error is common in business spheres as in literary. A young man or a young woman is content to copy the maxims and habits of those just immediately about them qr above them instead of looking for tho higher and the best 6-? htrsiness ideals and conforming their lives to them. So again in matters of morality and religion. People are satisfied to do just as their neighbours do. They compare their thought and conduct with those around them and feel contented if they are as good as they. Hence it comes about that religion is wounded in the house of its friends. How often is Christianity condemned because of its unworthy representatives? People point to this one and that other, and say “ if that is all their religion can do for them we have nothing to learn from it. Wo arc, in fact, better without.it.”

In soiling tho player who measures himself up against Colonel Bogey must be prepared for any number of failures and errors and mistakes. And so with the Colonel Bogey m life—the man who strives for the highest is sure to have many a fall on the way. He may be dismayed and tempted often to give up the struggle whatever form it may assume. But let him take heart. It is better to fail nobly than never to have had a striving worth calling a failure. Our business in life, says Stevenson, is ‘not to succeed, but to fail with a good grace. How many things and people reckoned at the time as failures turned out to be magnificent successes, and vice versa? An American writer recently tells that ho has been travelling over the places memorable as battlefields in the Southern States in the great war. He mentions some seven of them or more in which the Northern army suffered defeat. He points out that Grant took more defeats and lost more battles than Burnside and Hooker and M'Clellan put together. Yet he won the war. “ And I prophesied and said: 1 Oh. ye who were slain in all these fields of blood, rise ye and testify against the sons of men that they fight at all and fight with such futility.’ And then add ye this word: ‘lf ye must fight, fight for something worth continuing to fight for, and do not stay defeated. For the battle is won not by him who is never whipped, but by him who, being whipped, goeth on to victory.’ ” That is right. And the reason is, as Professor Peabody puts it, that “ discomfiture teaches the conditions of success. Mauy a life has learned the insignificance of its apparent triumphs, and has cherished as most precious the lessons of its defeats.” « * * * And then this ' further may be remembered for our inspiration in the midst of failures: that in the highest ventures it is the intention that counts. Intentions have got a bad name, and yet they do not altogether deserve it. For after all we are judged not by what we do, but by what we would do if we could. It is the inner wish and desire and anibition that tells the road we are travelling. Direction is destiny. We have the highest authority for saying that good, intentions count. In Hebrew history we are told that when David was not allowed to build the temple “ thou didst well that it was in thine heart.” Not long ago a remarkable book of “essays for the untheologically-minded,” now in its ninth edition, was published. It is entitled ‘ The Intention of His Soul.’ In the introduction the writer says: “ Each is judged by the intention of his soul, not by the wild whirling words wrung from him by a bout of pain or a season of darkness.” And he goes on to quote the rather remarkable words coming from such a source, the regius professor of divinity at Oxford, Dr Headlam. Bishop of Gloucester. In his Bamptou lectures the bishop says: “ In the present divided and imperfect state of the church all those who celebrate the sacraments according to the command of our Lord and with the full intention of fulfilling his will . . . must be held to have valid sacraments and order.” The emphasis thus laid on intention is very significant. We know that good intentions are said to pave the road to uncomfortable quarters. Nevertheless, they are entitled to more honour than is usually accorded to them, and Lowell’s lines may fitly be recalled:

Ah, let us hope that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when wo tread His ways, But when the Spirit beckons: That some slight good is also brought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good m thought. Howe’er wo fail m action.