The Christchurch Star. PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1932. SPORT AND SPORTSMANSHIP.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 519, 30 July 1932, Page 8

The Christchurch Star. PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1932. SPORT AND SPORTSMANSHIP.

FOR the next sixteen days the interest of the world will be focused on the representatives of the fifty nations who are competing in the Olympic Games at I.os Angeles, and in that fact will be found the most remarkable potentiality for international good-fellow-ship that the world has seen. For sport is now the monopoly of no nation, and has been taken up with almost fanatical fervour by some of the nations not traditionally sportloving. If there is a danger in the Olympic Games, indeed, it lies in the over-zealous partisanship of nations that are not attuned to the true sporting tradition, hut there could be no school in which this tradition could be more carefully fostered than that in which the fear of international censure must tend to check abuses, and as time goes by the value of these athletic gatherings will be reflected not only in a higher standard of athletic development and achievement, hut in a greater tolerance of others, based on the hard facts of good sportsmanship in victory or defeat. New Zealand has sent a small team, by international standards, upon which it does not build very great hopes, but at the very worst the Olympic Games serve the useful purpose of measuring the achievements of any country’s athletes against the world’s best, and failure is often the greatest incentive to better things. THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE. IT IS PERTINENT to ask whether a virile keenness for sport is not the best antidote for the loss of that spirit of adventure which an English public schoolmaster deplores. England at the moment is suffering a sporting eclipse, which has been brought about partly by a pose of indifference towards winning or losing in sport. To that, perhaps, more than to any effect of the Great War may be attributed whatever there is of timidity or untruthfulness that the headmaster pretends to find in the English public schoolboy of to-day. We in New Zealand have not escaped some of the ill-effects of the war, which are to be found in a more careless attitude towards the serious side of life, but it would be nonsensical to say that the youthful spirit of adventure is not a livelier thing to-day than ever it has been. In fact, the adventures of thirty or forty years ago were much more imaginary than they are to-day, when widening horizons in every direction; the ease of travel and its opportunities; the greater spirit of freedom engendered by out-of-door pursuits like the youth movements that Germany has taught us; the development of cars and motorcycles, and, above all, the growing air-mindedness of young people, have produced a generation just a little bit too adventurous and venturesome for their parents’ ease of mind. England has had a feeble flock of boys imitating girls and girls imitating boys, but no generalisation on this subject would be just, and the case is probably not nearly as bad as it has been made out to be. HEAT AND THE HUMANITIES. 'T''HE ATMOSPHERE of the Police Court, unheated except for one small fire, may have been originally intended to give the accused, already shivering in their shoes, a foretaste of the bleak austerity of prison cells. But apparently the court officials of to-day do not appreciate that lack of warm humanitarian sympathy that has condemned the just to suffer With the unjust. Certainly they would be quite justified in agitating for central heating, both on the score of compassion and economy, and it is, indeed, surprising that departmental economists have not, before this, appreciated the moneysaving advantages of steam heating for all public buildings. Even churches would be wise to inslal up-to-date systems, if for no other reason than that their congregations might otherwise discount the prospects of a grilling hereafter.