SPORT OF TO-DAY.

Colonist, Volume LV, Issue 13775, 16 July 1913, Page 2

SPORT OF TO-DAY.

A writer in tho London "Mail" sayvS:—We prove our superiority over tho ancients in two directions: in the swift transmission of news and in tho rapid transport of our bodies from one place to another. Every morning & day's history of the world lies open .■before'tis. Sport as our ..ancestors discerned it, was long ago changed into a serious business. Everyone is a professional nowadays and plays hois game with a depressing, gravity. Whether it 'be golf or cricket, football or polo, which engagos his leisure, h© banishes all hope of enjoymen^ when ho goes upon the field. Ho attacks the socalled sport as though it were the ono stern occupation of his life. He doos not set about it with a nynd freed from anxiety or as one resolved upon an hour of joyous recreation. The game itself, as it is played to-day, brings with its own pangs, its own heartburnings. If you would test tho truth of Froissart's often-quoted sentence- that the English take their -'"•' i»i»t»»«ii«iMiw»«w»MiMiMiMjiiaaßißUdaaaHJtMHJMii«—<»m»»m™«

pleasures sadly you have but to watclj a game of golf. The ministrants-faeces-their task with a hieratic solemnity,, as though they were engaged in arcligious ceremony. And when tho ■ battle is lost and won the poor antagonists must needs fight tlioir battles over again at a dull fireside, explaining how they "foozled" this shot or that, and laying all tho blamo of their ineptitude- upon a blameless implement. And then, as though tho sporfcof to-day were; not already a gloomy kind of professionalism, wo havo invented a monstrous- thing known as "international sport",?''the first incentivo yet discovered^ to'ill-feeling and! luicharitableness. If an Englishman is beaten upon tho running path by. a man of another race we leap instantly to a pious conclusion of national degeneracy. In a storm of jealousy and" rancour the one fair purpose of sport a love of the game —is instantly overwhelmed. Sot face to face in ■ rivalry with foreigners. we forget theduty of losing, we obscure our ancient hope that the best men should bo victorious, wo make an open declaration > of our faith that sport has but one purpose, which is to win. And soil ercely has the' mimic warfare been waged that before long every Foreign 'Office- in the world will be compelled to establish a department which shallcontrol tho hostile enthusiasm of international sport.