HOCKEY AND WOMEN

Grey River Argus, 16 June 1925, Page 8

HOCKEY AND WOMEN

A GAME THAT HAS HELPED THE SEX. With docent rejoicings women have just boon celebrating the game of hockey. They have reason (declares the Daily Telegraph), other game has done so much tho liberty and equality of their sex. This we write well aware that to prai.se any game in print is to make the vnHrim; of others furiously protectant. No opinion whatever is here expressed as to which is the best game in general or which game is best for girls. We record the fact that as a team game for girls and women it is hockey first and the rest nowhere. Against that decision of the schools and the generation who now are the mothers of school girl-; there is no appeal. When we consider tho difference in stature, vigour, and esprit de corps between this generation and those who were trained in tho days before girls’ schools and hockey teams, we shall agree that wo. men do well to celebrate their discovery of the game. Even the games mistress would not give hockey all the credit for the change in tho atmosphere of girls’ schools and in tho activities of women. There are other factors. But consider ho*w much healthier those schools in which Charlotte Bronte suffered would have been with a hockey fiedd and you will not he inclined to limit narrow)’/ the' benefits of a cult of physical fitness among girls, of an interest in the technique of a good game, and of the point of honour taught in playing for a side. The devil’s advocate has been heard to produce sad stories of the of hockey, and, indeed, of any strenuous game on adolescent girls, and it is possible that he may have been telling the truth. Some girls, we can believe, have suffered from playing too hard, as some lads have weakened their hearts by row- | ing, and other teen killed on the football field. We do not, therefore. argue that football must be forbidden and no boy should row. We accept the over'whelining evidence that rowing and football and hockey are for -..he greatest good of the greatest number that (ho modern girl has reason tn be grateful for the 30 years of fem ini no hockey, the fruits whereof she enjoys, there is no sort of doubt. Those pessimists who fear that the cult of games is destroying the eternal feminine may find some balm in the speeches at the hockey festival, for most of them, we are informed, “compared the present dress with the past/’ That is, indeed, a large and delightful subject. Tn the bravo but shy old days t, ■

were not allowed to play in ‘ : o r tunics.” those garments which '’urt.nil the alreadv curtailed skirt, but h->d tn wear a. garment falling to the ground. Tho modern Amazons wer'* fold of Victorian players “in long blue serge skirts, white blouses, and balloon sleeves, and straw bats fixed on with long pins.” and, wo fear, thought less than ever of their mothers and grandmothers. But we drr»Vpiat'? these partial antiquarian researches. Tf the girl of the period is to hear about her progenitors’ awful youth the mon must not bo spared. To fell of tho flowing skirts and lulloon sleeves in which the women of 1895 play?d hockey is not fair unless it be added that a lit+le earlier mon were playing Hugger not only in whiskers, but in what wo call “phis fours.” There is extant a picture of rn Oxford Soccer team of the ’seventies, in which trousers, and baggy trousers at that, are tho rule. Women wore not, so far behind. not sn much wnr.se off than men, as thov sometimes imagine. But what their future mav bo wo dare not pro di"t. M-hnthpr ; n games or in tho clothes for games.