APPLAUSE AT GAMES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 27 December 1924, Page 6

APPLAUSE AT GAMES.

CAN THERE BE TOO MUCH?

A writer in the Manchester Guardian says: Mr Bernard Shaw has been considering the propaganda by example which the American baseball champions are carrying on in this country. As he begins his verdict by v saying “I cannot endure the boredom of sport,” he is rather in the position of a deaf man called upon to pass judgment on a sonata. But he claims to look on as a sociologist, and it is presumably in this capacity that he finds it ‘‘surprising and delightful” that the spectators should be expected to lend vocal aid to the pretty considerable . shindy maintained by the players. There is, as a matter of fact, nothing surprising in applause or its reverse. We have it in some quality even in our' most tranquil games. But the ideal of baseball game by stimulating the crowd which is normally a vocal thing to greater is apparently to turn game into supervolume, variety and spontaneity of clamour, by giving. to every spectator the sense that he is himself by viftue of his voice an actual participator in, the contest. But is not this simply to make the worst of both worlds by at-, tempting to mix them? A game with no spectators riiay be excellent; so too may a game with a huge attendance of people who have collected owing to their desire to see a display of skill and endurance. But to suggest that the best kind of spectacle is that in which nobody is merely a spectator is no more intelligible than to suggest that the best kind of concert is that in which everybody joins in. .There are lawful occasions for the practice of joining in., ‘ f Auld Lang 'Syne 5 5 makes an indifferent solo; and few people are so jealous of the solemnities- of cricket that they would . care to see a test match century achieved without a hand stirring. But the British are probably ' right in distinguishing between applause and “barracking, ” and in preferring the former to the latter. \ The notion that they also serve who only stand and howl is only true if the howling be sudden and occasional. A continual din is equivalent to no din at all. And if games are to be lost or won by the manipulation of vocal ambushes in the crowd the elements of sport and skill must dwindle. That may not excite the sociologist, but some of us arc not so stern and unashamedly like play in which the teams, are like good Ibscnites, “alone-standing men/ ’ and not dependent on • such flourishes and alarums as an ingenious mob can contrive. x , ‘