POPULATION DENSITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23084, 9 January 1937, Page 22

POPULATION DENSITY

■ - HANDICAP TO SPORTS - “A Canadian editor has recently drawn attention to the underpopulation of his country by a peculiarly graphic use of statistics, stated The Times recently ‘“lt is appalling,’ he said, ‘ that Canada has a population of only three and a-half persons per square mile—-not enough for a game of bridge.’ There are those of us to whom this state of affairs will seem a singularly happy one; but most people nowadays are bridge fiends, to whom four’s company and half, a fiend is worse than useless. We may take it, therefore, that the greatest good of the greatest number is ill served by a community so inconveniently eparpille. Be that as it may, there is reason to welcome the introduction of what the Americans would probably call a recreational yardstick into the rarefied but arid realms of population statistics. i “It may be of interest .to apply this criterion to other lands, with a view to discovering what amusements lie within the scope of the inhabitants of each square mile of the earth’s surface. Most European countries are pretty well off in this respect, and none more conspicuously so than Monaco, which, with only four square miles of territory but with 5750 Monegasques on each of them, could stage practically any athletic or social event and still have a surplus left over to act as spectators. Norway, on the other hand, With 22 per square mile, has only just enough for an Association football match without' a referee. (Ethiopia, where a similar situation prevails, probably prefers, in the light of recent experience, to dispense with that functionary.) - “ Elsewhere in Africa the peoples of British. French and Italian Somaliland are all in an equally invidious position; for their population density—five, in each case, to the square mile—compels them to resort, in order to avoid heartburning, to round games (such as hide and seek) of small esteem and little calculated to foster the team spirit. Fiji and British Guiana, like Canada, are limited to cut-throat bridge. Certain even more sparsely peopled countries are enviable by comparison, for there are any number of games, from lawn tennis to backgammon, open to the two inhabitants of each square mile in Iceland, ! Australia and Bechuanaland. It is a melancholy coincidence that almost the only country populated, with what the Canadian editor would presumably consider the ideal density of four per square mile is Tibet, a country in which bridge is very little played. Still, there are other games for four, and Tibet’s claim on our sympathy is nothing like so strong as that of Libya and French Guiana, where the unfortunate indigene, alone in the middle of his square mile, iff’ presumably reduced to patience, to crossword puzzles and to skipping.”