MANIA FOR SPORT.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXIV, Issue 12747, 19 April 1909, Page 7

MANIA FOR SPORT.

(From the Westminster Gazette). An incident which is reported in the papers casts a dry light upon a certain phase of the nation.il character. The Lord Mayor of Bristol, it appears, has found it necessary to issue a letter intimating that a number of men in that city drawn from the unemployed ranks and put on relief works are to be discharged because they have been agitating for facilities to. see football matches.

We will' not spread the moral beyond its foundation of fact, for it may be that the football agitators are, after all, a small minority of the total of unemployed. But fit ill it is a fact which hits rather hard that there is even a minority among men presumably reduced to destitution whicli •ill sacrifice its la^t chance of earning a wage rather than abandon its inalienable right of seeing a football match. That argues a positive passion which, if anything, could, would almost dignify these martyrs to eport. And, assuredly, when we reflect on tlie hundreds of thousands of the population whose thoughts during the winter months are concentrated on Vu performances of rival athletes in tho football field, we do get a very queer mental picture of English life. There is nothing new about the present symptoms. The English have for generations been a coek-fiyiiting, dog-fighting, horse-racing, pugilistic people. Tf we look back to the contemporary records, say, of the Napoleonic period, we shall find thaf at moments when, according to the historians, they ought to have been plunged into mourning, or racked with anxiety they were in fact absorbed with excitement about a coming prize-fight or a coming horse race.

The main question is a question of education. We have had compulsory primary education for now nearly forty years and in the last decade or so it has greatly imnroved. 'But a vast number of our peonk *iave as yet received r.o more education than- is implied in an imperfect masten of the mechanical arts of readiner anri writing — arts which supply the key jusl as often to the sporting column and thr betting odds as to thought or literature.'

TAUrO QUAY WANGANUL

OATIBKBS, ITOv, v

Approved by N.Z. Trotting Association.— P. SELIG, President

THI A7BXUI.