SPORT AND WAR

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144854, 4 December 1915, Page 8

SPORT AND WAR

ENGLISH DOCTOR’S VIEW. “There is no more reason for ostracising a professional footballer or cricketer than there is for denouncing a shoemaker or an actor because he does not ‘join the army,” writes T. Claye Shaw, M.D., F.R.C.P., Lond., in an article on the psychology of sport and patriotism, which is quoted in the London Sporting Life. What of tho crowds which go to see football and cricket matches, he asks? Does anyone suppose that these people refuse to enlist because they want to attend these matchs? No; what they want is to spend their spare time in being interested or amused, just as others like to go to a music hall or a musical* recital, and it is illogical to blame tho former as it would be cruel to rail at the latter.

The moderate cultivation of sports is a thing to bo encouraged, because it brings health and promotes selfreliance and personality; it is the excessive indulgence which is to be deprecated, and it is probable that after th© war tho addiction to it which has made us a byword to our neighbours will disappear. Sport is a mental food, as necessary for tho integrity of the mind as meat and drink are for the body, and just as excess in the latter clogs the tissues and brings about disease and sloth, so does over-devotion, to th© former cause distaste for brain-energy, and, as a consequence, ignorance and neglect of the true requirements of the social system.

Whilst wo do not attempt to shield from public disapprobation those who can and therefore should in thoir several capacities work for the good of the country in her hour of need, but who still remain aloof, and leave the work to be douo by others, we yet deem it a duty to express tho confident opinion that tho professional sporting class has come forward as well as any others, and that it would welcome a State order such as universal conscription which would relievo them of iho family obligaiions, which bind many of them, and make them suffer from the obloquy and the cruel remarks of those who ascribe thoir apparent indifference to patriotic appeals to cowardice, laziness or selfishness.

It is cheering to find th© value of snort in tho arduous times being gone through by om* soldiers and sauors. Cricket, but especially football and boxing, are what they most iovo when the opportunity offers to make them forgot tneir . troubles and tho distracting noises and dangers of th© trenches. Under these conditions sport is a sedative and a stimulant; it relieves the monotony of sitting about and doing nothing, and it stimulates to fresh endeavour by promoting health and contentment.

; Sport and its materials are part of tho munitions of the battlefield, and a camp without a bat, ball, and gloves, is only half-equipped. As in peace so in war—without sport of some kind there ensues ennui, the healthy man must always be doing something, he must do Ids work, then comes his play, and at night his lucubrations turn to the Josser kinds of sport—cards and puzzles, chess and cnbbago. Work, sport, and sleep—these are the great annihilators of time, and it is difficult to say under which auspices time passes the most quickly. Tho object in most kinds of sport is to boat the adversary, but not to kill him—in fact, tho life of tho latter is I desired so that he may be used again. | Why, then, all this outcry against 1 “sportsmen” for not enlisting en bloc? I Surely it is because people have not properly understood the true nature of the sporting mind, but have confounded it with the mortal combative mind, which is quite a different thing. It is absurd, then, to abuse sportsmen who have no\ enlisted merely because it is thought that sportsmen are specially connected psychologically with lighting, the fact being that the spirit ot rivalry—which may or may not, indeed, be present in tho ordinary sportsman—is very distinct from tho instinct of pugnacity, tho former being conservative in its essence, whilst tno latter is destructive. No doubt the training 1 of a sportsman is calculated to make I him a good soldier because ho is already disciplined in the ethics of sport. He knows that he must work under the orders of his leader, and must conform to rules; but it does not therefore follow that he- is more bound to enlist than is any other individual of a voluntary system.

Sport is as opium to the jaded spirit, it soothes the tedium of life, but it has its dangers—it* may run into a dangerous habit, narcotising' and paralysing both mind and body for all else.