SCHOOLBOY ATHLETES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21793, 7 May 1934, Page 12

SCHOOLBOY ATHLETES

MELBOURNE CONTESTS REPLY TO CRITICISM MR. F. MILNER'S SUPPORT Criticism of the proposal to send a team of New Zealand secondary school athletes to Australia to compete in competitions to be hold in connection with the Melbourne centenary celebrations next November is not shared by Mr. F. Milncr, headmaster of Waitaki Boys' High School, Oamaru, who sees much merit in tho scheme and deprecates some of the statements made concerning the likely effect of tho tour on the boys taking part. "I am entirely in favour of the despatch of an athletic team to represent the secondary schools of New Zealand at tho forthcoming Melbourno centenary celebrations," states Mr. Milner in a letter to the Herald. "Tho proposed athletic meeting is an Empire,not an international, function. I understand that the date is not yet finalised and may bo postponed till tho long vacation. Sporting Gesture to Accept "In any caso the event is unique in the history of our sister State. Its commemoration, honoured by tho personal attendance of Royalty (another commercial stunt I presume on the part of the Melbourne Council), and by a delegation from the Royal Empire Society, justifies full Imperial co-operation and participation in all spheres of national activity.

"Tho acceptance of the proposal will be a sporting gesture of friendship from our own youth. In spite of the gloomy vaticinations of self-constituted hicrarchs of athletic purism we have surely enough confidence in our boys' mental balance and moral fibre, and in their guidance by the master in charge, to believe that they will return unscatched by this apocryphal contagion. Moreover, it is an isolated event entailing no further commitments.

"No headmaster here advocates either commercialisation of sport or stunt exploitation. The forthcoming celebration is on a plane immune from that taint. The aspect which appeals to many of us is the Empire-wide range of the commemoration, the social fraternisation of the picked athletic youth of the Empire, and the educativo comparison of standards of performance. From this point of view of Empire citizenship and Empire unity the proposal is decidedly a good thing. American Sportsmanship

"The gibe at American standards of sport comes with fyl graco from any headmaster in this Dominion, and especially from one anxious to extract substantial financial aid for his own school from an American corporation. As one who last year saw the British Vandals team so generously and chivalrously received and entertained in America, and also as one who knows how highly Lovelock and the Cam-bridge-Oxford athletes rated American sportsmanship, I take exception to this churlish depreciation. "Dr. Norwood, in his book, postulates Anglo-American understanding, friendship, and co-operation as the fundamental necessity for stabilisation of world peace. Let us therefore be more reticent in our criticisms of a great country which is already a dominant force in the new order of international relationship."