"PUNCH" ON NEW ZEALAND'S DEFEAT.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12903, 14 February 1906, Page 7

"PUNCH" ON NEW ZEALAND'S DEFEAT.

" Punch " has a somewhat. ponderously humorous article on the defeat of the New Zealand footballers by' Wales, in which the writer professes to attempt to explain the causes of that defeat after the fashion of the tone adopted by certain writers in England with reference to the previous successes of the New Zealand footballers. After dealing with Welsh players, " Punch " says':'—

"Turning to the New Zealanders, we have to ask ourselves, whether the quality of degeneracy (a term nsually employed in explanation of British defeats) can fairly be predicted of so young a race. lam rather inclined to attribute their debacle to arrested development. But it is not to their history and traditions (still in the elementary stages of construction) that wa must look for the causes of this arrest, but .rather to natural environment and social, and political-institutions. Under the first head I have only .time to..mention the/geysers, or boiling- springs, ~ which are a- feature of these unfortunate islands.. I kaow.- of nothing more enervating than a geyser.- No country that produces them h;.-s eve:- become a First-class Power without a desperate struggle. Iceland has gey- ! sers, and that is where the Prodigal Son | wine from. Further, in New Zealand, as jin Iceland, you have those extremes of j weaj and cold which are so injurious to j the system: geysers at one end of the j thermometer and frozen lamb at the other. j T'aea there is the institution of. Female j Suffrage. Where the women of a nation j become men. its men are apt to become wameE-- No less, a persons than Xerxes is my "authority for this generalisation, l>:-.sed on a remark let fall "by him, .from a safe distance, at the battle of Salamis. Finally, in the person of the Right Hon. Richard Seddoh. New Zealand's ideal figure we, have a- standard of physical culture which makes for national obesity. ... His bodily dimensions (quite apart from his tendency to .mental tumidity) cannot but nave exerted a baleful influence upon his ioyal subjects, discouraging that abstinence and self-restraint which are essential to a perfect, training, and more than counterbalancing the' admirable example offered by ' -tlje svelete and almost- acetic figure of the Hon.-: W. P. Reeves, High Commissioner ■ f&r the colony. , These drawbacks nothwithstanding—and, after all, though the footballers of New. Zealand may have had o, hand in the establishment of Female Suffrage, "Frozen Lamb, and Mr Seddon, yet them cannot be held responsible for their ■- Premier's. proportions, nor for the Geysersj—l"*"mnst' believe that this promising young country, by strict attention to its : physique, will eventually distinguish, itself j and s;n.;l out a' combination worthy to cross ! nhins with the all-conquering Cymry."