"May 6.
Along with the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of the Eastern Mediterranean, and the possibilities of invasion, all of which Hitler has promised will be critical questions during this summer, the English themselves are about fo launch upon the Battle of the Cricketfield. This battle, it appears, will be fought out among the English themselves, with the ce-operation of some Australians and other Empire forces who will not. be engaged elsewhere on the extremely wide-flung area'of all the other contests. It is therefore possible that Englishmen may receive some shocks during the coming season, when' they read posters, "England threatened with disaster," and hurriedly buy an evening paper only to find that the Royal Air Force has taken six wickets for 30 runs and that the English tail is doing its best to wag against the deadly bowling of Robbins oF some other former international cricketer, who has been enticed into the Air Force. It must have been news to most followers of England's national game, that Walter Hammond, the best all-rounder playing today, is a member of the R.A. and is in the Middle East. "There can be one satisfaction felt over this, and this is that Hammond should prove 2 formidable obstacle to Australian cricket victories in that part of the world. For there can be no doubt at all that, whatever the state of the war against the Nazis and the Fascists in those regions, cricket matches between those ancient rivals, the' Australians and the English, will continue to be played, though even ona small scale.
This frame of mind may seem frivolous or even worse to many peoples who are now suffering beneath the Nazi heel. It would probably be quite incomprehensible to the Nazis themselves. This latter fact -should not, however, be taken as any evidence against it, The Nazis noticed many years go that sports seemed to be one of the strong suits of the British people, and with the laudable object of making it also one of their own strong suits, adopted it with their usual vigour. The result was that they turned sport into toil. Their young men benefitted physically from the exercises they were put through, but the idea of playing the game for the game's sake never entered into their heads. They played games because games made them fitter than anything else for the job of slaughter and conquest for which their gangster rulers had designed them. Hence sport for its own sake never existed among them, but games became simply another form of military pre-aration for the grim task their leaders had Set before them. This may be one reason why they never took to cricket.
The English are among the first to joke about the alleged dullness of their national game. A famous humourist who unfortunately had a brilliant career cut short by a German bullet in the last war, once told the story of the gentleman who died during a cricket match after seven runs had been scored during the fall of two and a half inches of rain, and put the cause of death down to excitement. "His analysis was made, of course, before the modern world had Jearnt of all the different complexes and what-nots which inspire, or are supposed to inspire, even the slightest actions of anyone these days. Nevertheless it is possible for the dyed-in-the-wool cricketer to imagine some such situation arising, say, at the critical point of a Test Match, when, as it usually does; the variable British weather comes to the rescue of a side which has everything to win or lose by "playing out time." But even if the analysis did prove to bbe wrong in this instance, every lover of the game who has sneaked away from his office during an important match and has sat at Lords during a spasm of showers which has made play impossible, will easily understand how it is possible for the enthusiast to give up the ghost for no other reason than sheer exasperation' with the Weather Clerk.
Sport has become such an integral feature of the British character that the Empire's enemies may well be puzzled by it. It seems nothing less than an insult to Goering's much boasted Luftwaffe that 75,000 persons should have been able to assemble in Glasgow last Saturday to see an Association Football match between England and Scotland, and that the number should have been limited to only 75,000 by the Glasgow police. One of the first proofs that a people is being terrorized by bombing and is losing its moral is a marked tendency to avoid crowds. Yet the English and the Scots had to be told that only 75,000 of them could be permitted to enter the ground to watch this match—considerably fewer than were required to capture two hundred thousand Italians in Africa, This sort of thing should give Hitler. or his propaganda minister, Goebbels, serious food for thought. In the first place it is proof that there is no fear in Britain that the assembly of such large crowds might be taken as a pretext for agitation against the government, Such as is the case in Europe, where all large assemblies are forbidden. In the second, it should be noted that many, many more Britons are willing to take the risk of meeting in a comparatively confined space to see a football match than there are Germans who are willing to take the same risk to hear the Fuehrer speak. And in the third place it shows that Britons, bombings or no bombings, still retain a sense of proportion, Sport is as much a part of life as work. Jack has not yet, as has his Nazi counterpart, "become a dull boy."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.