LEISURE AND ITS USES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15056, 27 July 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

LEISURE AND ITS USES.

BY V TOHUKOA.

When all our dreams come true there will be no leisured class " any more, for four hours work daily at three working days to the' week will make a sufficiently leisured mass" to make class distinctions quite superfluous. It will, of course, be some little timo before 12 hours weekly is sufficient for all civilised requirements, especially if we are all to have a motor car apiece with a fancy swimming bath on every ferry boat; but who knows what may not bo possible when we have only to touch electric buttons to set the cows n-milking and to pull. a lever in a powerhouse to have coal cut without hands and land ploughed without horses.

The problem is not so much the, amount of leisure we- may have as the uso wo shall make of our leisure when wo have it. Judging from the way things ore, we do not make excessively good use of the leisure we have already, and we shall certainly have to improve before it is worth while to clamour for much more. To those who use it well, leisure is an invaluable asset in the business of life; to those who uso it badly, leisure is the opportunity which Satan needs, as good old Dr. Watts told us in our youth.

The true character of a people is told by its use of leisure, not by its working or its sleeping. Wo commonly work very automatically, and not infrequently toil reluctantly at work for which we are very poorly fitted.

There arc many indifferent shopkeepers who would be first-class engineers, and many poor doctors who might be selling ribbons with success. There are lawyers who ought to be farmers, and farmers who ought to be sailormen, and sailormen who ought to be shovelling sand. Yet circumstances are such that when a man gets into a groove he is generally compelled to stay in that groove, even in the colonies, whether ho likes it or not. Yet so steadily do men grind away at their unsuitable avocations that there are respected and passable judges who have not the judicial instinct, and architects in good standing whose work needlessly vexes the artistic eve".

When wo constantly see this unfitness among men who are not unknown in their professions or even unknown to fame, how can we wonder that it is common in the great multitude of men? The constant specialisation of industry has certainly limited the opportunity of the craftsman, but even in polishing the point of a pin there may be some interest to the right sort of polisher, arid in turning out millions of chair-legs there may be some attraction to those born far that divine purpose. The difficulty is that men are polishing pins wfio might excel as engineers and turning chair-legs whose souls are following the plough. What lawyers are lost in ships fo'castles! What doctors are buried in coal mines! What matchless preachers are dumb amid the whirl of deafening machines! The work of a people under existing conditions really demonstrates its capacity for endurance, and does not clearly display the desires and cravings that spring from its intrinsic character. But in leisure we get the real man and woman, for leisure is free while work is too frequently forced. When work ceases for the day or for the week, when the individual draws a long breath and is himself again, then we have some indication of what lie really is. We need not go to Germany or France or India to see how their people spend their leisure and to compare them to our own favoured lands. We can see here in New Zealand how leisure is employed ; can plainly see that our leisure time is largely and woefully wasted.

The leisure that is spent in keeping the human body physically sound and fit is nobly employed—although it is obvious that if a man or •woman live for no other purpose than to keep fit they might as well swim out to sea. until they sink. The athletic use of leisure, as a rule, is not thus purposed, however. It is the natural and instinctive -exercising of limbs and muscles which would otherwise stiffen untimely* in the necessary avocations of industrial and professional life. As children skip and jump and run, so lads and young men take to the football ground and to the cricket field, to- yachting, to shooting, to fishing, and to the kindred sports, girls take to tennis and hockey, and the elders to golf and bowls. All this is averagely good. Indeed, the best that can be said of our use of leisure is that to a very considerable extent it encourages physical strength and fitness.

But .looking at a football match is a different thing altogether, just as looking at a race is totally different to riding a horse at a fence. Civilisation most unhappily tends to make men lookers-on at games, and blatant gossippers about sports in which they never take active part. It is because there are a hundred men at a race meeting who know nothing whatever of riding for every man who knows the thrill of feeling a good horse under him, that the racecourse is so rapidly degenerating. The average racegoer knows nothing and cares nothing for the sturdy horse that can carry a twelve-stone man while throwing the miles behind him hour after hour, and only seeks the purely gambling excitement to be obtained from seeing a weed sprint a. few furlongs with a dwarf on its back. Every horseman in New Zealand, without exception, knows that short distance races, at light weights, are disastrous to true horsebreeding and are unworthy of the name of " sport," but the horsemen who love horses have been overpowered by the commercial necessity to cater for the shouting mob of lookers-on. In the racecourse and its attendant interests we have the degeneration of leisure. as it is coming upon football, and upon other manly and wholesome ways of enjoying leisure. To spend evening hours on a horse's back is wholesome: to spend evening hours discoursing stupidly of spindley racehorses, weights and prospects, is as unwholesome as it is stupid. The mere gambling is a petty evil compared to the stupendous evil of wasted time, . lost strength, accumulating dullness of intellect. Approximately the same may be said of every habitual looking-on. If we can only use our leisure in gaping at others we might better have no leisure at all. It may be said that the masses have had no opportunity of acquiring knowledge of how to use leisure—but leisure is wasted as much by the " classes" as by the " masses." In fact, all that most of the " leisured classes " in old countries need to make them decent citizens is from six to eight hours' hard work daily for five days a week. The best use of leisure is clearly made by strenuously industrious men and women, who keep themselves physically fit for their work, and keep themselves intellectually abreast of growing knowledge i in lines which interest them.

"When we are really civilised we shall work to enjoy leisure, and by our abundant leisure will possess the healthy mind in the healthy body, which is the ideal. But until we are really civilised, it seems as though there is little better use for leisure than to keep us fit for our work and fairly abreast of- the times. All of which does not alter the fact that those who only toil and sleep miss the joy of life and tho meaning of living.