CASE MADE FOR CHANGE TO RULES
ABOUT 2,000 acres of open spaces in London are suitable for the playing of games of various descriptions, and in a letter which Mr. GERALD V. WELLESLEY has addressed to the London County Council, it is suggested that the existing prohibition against Sunday play should be withdrawn.
The arguments which are advanced deserve careful consideration, not only by those with whom the decision rests, but by the people of London as well as of other large cities. For the issue is an important one in its bearing on the physique and health of the rising generation.
Experience has shown that the proposal that games should be allowed on Sundays on public ground is a cause of offence to many persons, whose conscientious objections deserve the utmost respect. They are not to be dismissed in an off-hand way, but demand sympathetic treatment. For a strong desire to observe the “Day of Rest” is cherished by many persons in this country who seldom go inside a church. It has been said that if the Sunday had not been established by Divine ordinance, the Englishman would have had to invent it; and certainly this nation has gained incalculably from the cessation of all labour on the first day of the week; it returns to the routine of work refreshed in mind and body. We do not take it that Mr. WELLESLEY and others who, like him, are interested in clubs for men and boys who live in the over-crowded and hard-working areas of our great cities, have any wish to interfere with the traditional British Sunday or to outrage the feelings of those who reverence it. They would so be mistaken in so doing.
We are all familiar with the case which can be, and in the past has been, made out against any change in regard to Sunday games; and with the rebutting evidence based on the practice in mediaeval times when the Church itself smiled on such means to healthy recreation. The problem is not to be settled by such means, but rather by an attempt to bring conscience, even the most tender conscience, into accord with the new conditions of life of a people who are becoming increasingly town-dwellers and industrial workers.