PUBLIC WRESTLING.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 253, 20 September 1930, Page 2

PUBLIC WRESTLING.

(To the Editor). . Sir, —It was recently claimed by a writer in both local newspapers that Palmerston’s cultural standing could be judged by the indifferent quality of the books available in our public library. Without giving that scribe due thought, one was moved to censure him for being too sweeping in his wholesale condemnation of our tastes in reading, but that much can justly be advanced in his support is undeniable. And if our reading provides an index to our culture, what can be said' of our finding costly entertainment in the brutal “sport” of wrestling? Listen to the Sydney broadcast man at the Thye-Edwards maul being quoted: “Oh, oh! I say. Something terrible has happened. The referee has been laid out. My word, this crowd is going mad”; and so on, ad lib. We claim to have advanced since Butler wrote: “No Indian prince has to his palace more followers than a thief to the gallows,” but how much? The urge that moved the mob to witness a hanging is few removes from that which prompts men to sit and enjoy the spectacle of two of their fellowmen exerting every atom of their being in an' attempt to maim. And “custom makes all things easy, and content is careless,” and the difference between man-maiming and bullbaiting is not great and the slide to it easy. Are we, as Britishers, go. ing to descend as a Power like once proud Spain has done?—l am, etc., PATERFAMILIAS.