A GOLFING CIVILIZATION

The excellent game of golf seems to be coming in for a great deal of unusual notoriety from several sources. Not only does one find the usual items on the sporting page, such as reports of experiments with a lighter ball, but headlines shriek out that General Edwards is insulted by the tale that golf got him his high rank, and the Paris "Midi" asserts that "General Dawes failed to take golf into account" when he arranged his program for the reparations conference.

Apparently this is a game which no statesman can afford to neglect; its influence on the destinies of man deserves more profound contemplation than our comic section artists have been wont to give, and few others have thought of it philosophically at all. Its devastating effect on family life has become traditional enough to make "golf widow" a picturesque term, and of course, it is well-known that professional men, especially doctors, commonly abandon their patients or clients for the links.

General Edwards, by the way, ought to be delighted by the report that golf got him his high rank. What a whale of a game the general must play, to win promotion for that alone! And besides, judging from their ardent preoccupation with the sport several eminently worthy Presidents of the United States must have been elected chiefly on account of their golfing proficiency. General Dawes, though, is certainly up against it, with his energetic 24-hour day ideas to put across, and an assemblage of enthusiastic English golfers to get them across to. With these gentlemen running back to their favorite courses every week-end. "Hell and Maria" may find his dynamic energy somewhat superfluous, just a bit too high-potential for European consumption.

There is one noted philosopher, however, who has seen golf in its true light, and recognized its importance in retarding the affairs of the world. Mr. George Bernard Shaw recognized in the golfing propensities of statesmen an unmistakable sign of the immaturity of mankind. Seventy years, he says, are barely long enough to outgrow the childish pastimes of games and frivolities. In order for man to become sufficiently mature to solve intelligently the problems of civilization he must increase his span of life; he must finally outgrow golf and all of the meaningless trifling that it represents.