The Star. SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1926. “SO RUN, THAT YE MAY OBTAIN.”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17853, 22 May 1926, Page 8

The Star. SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1926. “SO RUN, THAT YE MAY OBTAIN.”

While many will read with amused tolerance that Surrey cricketers are training on baseball methods, it is quite possible that the encouragement of the “ attaboy ” spirit is just the thing required to lift English sport into the position from which its representatives will be able to recover some of the country’s long-lost championships. Undoubtedly, success in cricket demands many of the qualities perfected in baseball by professional students of the game, but after all, there cannot be a great uplift merely from an improvement in throwing and catching if the will to win is not developed nationally. England has seen so many of its championships go abroad—in cricket, football, golf, and lawn tennis, to mention notable instances^—that there has developed an inferiority complex that is apologetically glossed over by the oft-quoted remark that the game should be played for its own sake, and not for the sake of winning or losing. There is, indeed, something very fine in a proper appreciation of this spirit. The English Lawn Tennis Association, over the door through which winners and losers retire from the centre court at Wimbledon, quotes Kipling’s line, “ If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the. same.” The sentiment is very fine, so long as it does not tend towards slackness in sport. St Paul caught the spirit better when the wrote to the sport-loving Corinthians:— “ Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receivcth the prize. So run, that ye may obtain.” Attainment means training, practice, and study—the study that New Zealanders give to Rugby, Australians to cricket, and Americans to baseball. When Englishmen import it into sport of every description, results must follow. Already a healthy sign is apparent in the chorus of criticism directed against Collins, the Australian captain, for not winning when the opportunity presented itself.

The conservatism of county councillors in the matter of road construction was illustrated in a discussion at Oarnaru, reported in this issue, in which a farmer urged a speed limit of from twenty to twenty-five miles an hour as a means of keeping down road maintenance costs and, presumably, rubbing along with the present old roads. He remarked that in the race between the car builder and the road builder the road builder had been left miles behind. It would be nearer the mark to say that local bodies have failed to avail themselves of the road builder’s art in fulfilment of their responsibility towards new forms of transport. It is undoubted that reading is the biggest problem of the hour, yet it receives the most cavalier treatment from the average county councillor and farmer. Of course, the problem is very largely a financial one, and it would be desirable to regulate the contributions of motorists according to the damage done by certain classes of vehicles, but wherever roads are reconstructed on sound lines the damage done to them by motor traffic is not pronounced. It would pay Christchurch, for instance, to scrap its present roads, which are an absolute disgrace to any city, and reconstruct them entirely on modern lines. But a forward policy is needed throughout the South Island, where local bodies are marking time with disastrous results. Canterbury, in particular, is in a most favourable position in regard to road materials, especially for concrete roads, which have been adopted extensively in Auckland. There, at a very low cost, as many as 420 square yards of roadway were laid in one day at a cost of approximately 18/- a yard, on a seven and a half mile stretch of roadway, towards the cost of which the Highways Board contributed 50 per cent. While benefits of this kind are the order of the day, the South Island is standing in its own light in holding back.