UNKNOWN

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14153, 12 March 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

UNKNOWN

COLONIAL CRITIC OX CODDLING, I (By Mrs P. A. Yaile in the Lou- | do:i ••Mirror.") '•Oil. bn, crine and look at tlie pretty doll in this- window." No, it y.v.sn't a little girl ihat said it. It was Sit lOin 01 soi'c young England. He was standing in front of a larjio toy shop in Hx.>lborn. .Mo "was mostly cuiiar and trousers, with a bracelet of coat round his waist and chest. and he had very pinlj cheeks. Nothing against him. *o: course—only he looked so much like the doll. Ma was a fine-looking Er.ilishvroir.an aV ; o with .red oheeks. which suited her. and she came and stood by the pink slab and beamed on him and the doll. Ma agreed that the doll was pretty and she looked as though she thought young hopeiul was. too. They rumiied the toys, and the-n the young man spoke again. SIXPENCE FROM ••PAR." "Mar''—how that mar-r annoyed me —"aren't you going to take me to tea r You know psr-r save you sixpence for me thi smorn ins." I cudn't know which to admire the most, par-r s generosity or his son's However, ma. agreed, and they we 'iciered off and left me to mv own reflations. -'~y mi;ul flew back i•) the sunnv Soutn, and I fell to thinking what wouk! come to this soft young; England if ho happened to jolt up ncainst a slab of Cornstalk anywhere within a foot and two-stone of liim —and I knew. . _ As it was with yon 115 pink-face, so it is with half or England's vouth. Thry are p?trw! and coddled and loved into pink softness. lu Australia <;r Now Zealand anything over five feet takes its mother to tea, has lost its interest . dt.lL;—-aid its father is same to allow it to handle its own capital. 1 I. wonder when Enghdi mrenls w:'l r :I 'i' a iess caddhng would ri:i,-;e better men and women of t2ie : r children. TOO MUCH REFINEMENT. I: is impcrsir.le for anyone who I;r>s travr l!rd much to be other struck bv rlie growing efEumisaev of England's yn^th. 1 hey are setting far too r;-?i;ird — externally. We want a little more of t!»c elemental man, a little less of the piiiiv children who worship good form. Toe so;tr."ss that is creeping into England's national life is sho'wa in many ways. Here in a great number of schools if two boys want to fight they settle it in the gymnasium with, six ounce gloves. Anything ihat will stand a six-ounce nlove between you and the other fellow's solar plexus isn't- worth fighting about. _ I have given it up since the lasttime, but that isn't so lo.ug ago that I have forgotten how I loved to feel the knuckled nestle into the other the_ knuckles nestle into the other ou wouldn't know that three of his front teeth are paid for. and that a stray tendon in my forearm hasn't worket- quite so well since—but we were fighting. One gets hurt fighting. One carries marks of it not infrequently for life. Young England likes it not. It was not ever thus. EFFECT OF CODDLING. To put the thing quite nlainly, it seems to me that the virility of the average English lad compares but sadly with his brother across the seas. The oversea Brition has to start '"picking" for himself quite earlv. He is five years ahead of the English lad in manliness and resource—for he is not coddled, and the English boy is. I plaved one of them tennis the other day. He kept me waiting i n my flannels for some minutes, then rolled out, swathed in a muffler and a blanket coat, but with a sweet little blue tie and delightfully creased trousers. After two sets he suggested that he was "dying for tea," I "was giving him ten years—and something else— — 1 had to stop, with an hour and .a halt ot daylinbt m front of me. Wo finished it with candles where I come : from. I have had vou.ng men confess to me ' 111 England that the third 100 u:> at billiards tired them. It seems to me that some of them are born tired, and thnt most of the others become so. If this '-tired feeling" were merely physical it would not b? so bad, but many of them are so tirod that "they ennnoi ihijik. is that I hear you saying, ma? . ponsense that the nnstv colonial is writing about your darlinrr boy. No, ma, it- really is.n't. The German ■ boys fieht with steel. We use ."nature's weapons, and the English bov Goz gloves. There's a lesson in this, dear f or you who love pink-faces so well—and for those who are moulding England's destiny, j