The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1933. ROMANCE AT WIMBLEDON.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 809, 8 July 1933, Page 10

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd.

SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1933. ROMANCE AT WIMBLEDON.

Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND London Represen:ativ«s : R. B. BRETT & SON NEW BRIDGE HOUSE, 30/34 NEW BRIDGE STREET LONDON. E.C.4.

/CRAWFORD’S defeat of Vines takes the world’s singles tennis championship to Australia, breaking the long succession of French and American victories since Patterson won the trophy in 1922 for Australia. It was confidently predicted that this year’s tennis would he the most brilliant in the history of the championships, and the critics will probably confirm this view. Crawford’s success is most gratifying from an Imperial point of view, for ever since 1909 the only British winners in this event have been Colonials —Wilding of New Zealand, who held it for four years from 1910; Brookes of Australia, who held it in 1914; and Patterson of Australia, who held it iu 1919 and 1922. In defeating Vines, who until now has been acclaimed as the most brilliant player the world has seen, Crawford has greatly enhanced his reputation. Most tennis players will humorously ascribe his improvement to the fact that he now has a wife to look after him, and there may be more in this than meets the eye, because tennis is essentially a game that requires great mental stimulus in desperately tight places to carry the player to success or buoy him up in the face of temporary reverse. One can imagine the fierce patriotism with which the most brilliant Frenchmen have won and defended the title, and there is conceivably a streak of fanaticism in the zeal with which, say, the Japanese have tackled the game in the face of physical disability in the matter of height. While Australians have a kindly sentiment for the Mother Country they have a vital enthusiasm for their southern homeland which makes them hard opponents, and when any man adds to pride of country the incentive to win for a lady’s sake his mind and heart wifi discover sources of physical strength beyond his usual endurance.

MEDICAL MYSTERIES. qpHE PROGRESS which the “ Lancet ” reports on the search for a cure for influenza may seem small enough to the layman, to whom the inoculation of ferrets may suggest perhaps the risk of the spread of the disease from animals to humans if by mischance a sick ferret should slip through a medical researcher’s fingers to liberty. For although one may smile at the ridicule Dr Johnson once poured on the idea of people catching colds from strangers, mystery still surrounds the spread of an epidemic like the 1918 outbreak. Boswell records of Dr Johnson:

This evening he disputed the truth of what is said, as to the people of St Kilda catching cold whenever strangers come. “ How can there (said he) be a physical effect without a physical cause?” —He added, laughing, “ the arrival of a ship full of strangers would kill them; for, if one stranger gives them one cold, two strangers must give them two colds; and so in proportion.”—l wondered to hear him ridicule this, as he had praised M’Aulay for putting it in his book: saying that it was manly of him to tell a fact, however strange, if he himself believed it.

One wonders how Johnson would have speculated now on what we call influenza, a disease which has at times appeared to leap over quarantine barriers. These epidemics have come in waves round the world in such a hafiling manner that their spread has been ascribed even to stellar dust. Whether this disease is rightly named or not there seems to be some relation between influenza and the common cold, and when the doctors find a cure for the more dramatic ill we hope that it will not be long before they conquer the milder ailment.