The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, JULY 26, 1921. THE SPRINGBOKS

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10962, 26 July 1921, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, JULY 26, 1921. THE SPRINGBOKS

The immense crowd which watched tho football with the Springbok team proclaimed the love of our people for clean, healthy sport. It is a passion which can he discouraged by nothing, and ought to be encouraged in every way. Saturday’s attendance was a revelation, but not a discovery. For that matter, the popularity of all manly games is as old as history. That courage, skill, and endurance in combination have been drawing crowds of eager spectators is attested in every country’s literature from the earliest times. That the record supplied by the British people is the largest, the huge attendance on Saturday was a powerful reminder. No one who saw the numbers crowding early to the ground could doubt what is the favourite sport of this people, which rallies round every centre of eport, eager to see the forces of manliness in competitive action. The winter storm failed to reduce the volume of the crowd of thousands moving to the convincing ground. Neither blast of wind nor driving rain abated their absorbing interest throughout the play. No single murmur over the defeat of the home team marred their complete enjoyment of the sport, enjoyed under the extremely adverse natural conditions. Had the day been sun-steeped in “blue, unclouded weather,'.’ no crowd could have dispersed In greater content. The cynic rails at crowds enjoying idly the prowess of a handful, but this crowd suffered terribly, and seemed to enjoy itself all the more in consequence. Cynicism is shallow. The love of courage, skill, manly endurance, and combined, disciplined determination is deep in the hearts of the people. They went to the ground to admire these great things, and they got so much of them to admire that they forgot their own great discomfort. From first to last they watched in the keen spirit of sport, which is instinct not only with love of great qualities and fine achievements, but with the abiding sense of fair play, and is always adorned with generosity of judgment. It is the combination which makes the true sportsman, who represents in our day something of the chivalrous traditions that have survived through the ages from the days of old. In the spirit of true sportsmanship the manly games of our time are played by the few, and in the same spirit they are watched by the many. And of these many, a great proportion are themselves players on regular occasions, assembled to see the performances of the picked champions, and another great proportion have been themselves players, and in many cases not by any means unknown *to fame in their day. Who can doubt it who marks the behaviour of these great gala crowds? Take the intelligent interest of the great masses of Saturday. They missed no point in the well-contested, brave game under their eyes,, seeing everything and applauding everything to the echo. Every advance on either side carried the heart of the people with it. Each crisis found them worked np to white heat of excitement; not a single stroke of skill failed to rouse A roar of applause, louder than the storm-blasts that howled over the hills. It was a crowd that knew its game from A to Z. What is more, it applauded every achievement with a generous impartiality, absolutely unique. What other than a Wellington crowd, asked the captain of the visitors, would have carried the victorious captain of a visiting team shoulder-high off the ground? And when the teams made their bow, the visitors had the lion’s share of the great roar of greeting. And in all the shotting from the throngs above and below, no one could have told whether the encouragement was for our own men or for the strangers. The strangers said .very handsomeJy what they thought of such conduct. Their testimony put the crowning touch upon a day of ideal sportsmanship. In this there is more than the sportsmanship, good as sportsmanship, .the lineal descendant when properly viewed of this old chivalry which cannot die, is as a factor in the world of to-day. There remains that to consider on which the splendid sportsmanship of Saturday has thrown the clearest and most beautiful limelight. Some names in this visiting team” of ours suggest that once men of the race indicated by them were enemies of ours in our relations with our Empire. The record attendance in honour of their team on Saturday revived the memory of great crowds of twenty years since, cheering troops of ours embarking to contend with men of their race in contests of courage, skill, and endurance of far deadlier portent than the contest of Saturday} We know what has happened in the interval. Reconciliation is the principal happening. The race represented by the, language in which these names ■of . the visiting team are represented, came into the Empire whose policy sent our troops away to fight that race in South Africa. The result of that was, in the beginning, controversy. Leaving that controversy to perish on jhe scrap-heap of things unworthy, we turn to the great battles of the Somme. There we see the men of South Africa in line with the flower of our own youth, fighting the common enemy, earning undying laurels, by heroio deeds of unfadeable memory. The- hearts of our young men went out to them as they, too, faced death and ’ hardship, realising the bpnd that united them after the struggle which had given them mutual respect. Thus united, our young men, specially placed on Saturday to watch the great sport between ns, met them in watching the friendly sportsmanship. The result was, as tho record .of tho

event shows, magnificent sport, which, with its spirit of chivalry, has cemented the union realised practically on the battlefield of great and highly-pur-poseful war. Chivalrous sport has seconded righteous war in showing the world that if all the units of the Empire stand together as cordially as New Zealand and South Africa, the British Empire is the greatest force for righteousness and justice and the peace they represent as the world has ever seen.