Daily Kennebec Journal

English Women's Sport.

A cessation, which has proved to be temporary only, of diatribes against indulgence in violent forms of exercise by women led one to think that possibly the malcontents had ceased their opposition. But a recent recrudescence has made it clear that this is not so.

The plaint of the censors is almost always made from the society point of view. It is unladylike to overheat one's self. Dishevelled hair is unbecoming, if not absolutely indelicate, and the large hands and feet which we are assured are inevitably consequent upon the playing of games requiring much running or walking and the frequent grasping of clubs, rackets and such like implements unfit a woman for filling a place on as high a social plane as she otherwise would attain. No doubt the people who write these things from time to time are perfectly sincere, and think they are doing their best to stay the rapid downfall of their sex to a depth below redemption. It evidently never occurs to them that they may be fighting shadows, the shadows of evils of their own imaginings

In the first place, they take up an altogether unwarranted position in assuming that all women must naturally, or, at any rate, should, aspire to a state of society, the prevailing sentiment of which is an abhorrence of high color in the skin and large hands and feet. As a matter of fact some of the bluest blooded of our women possess all three attributes by process of birth, without the adventitious aid of a misguided course of violent exercise. Indeed one may go so far as to say that the petite person, pale in complexion, with tiny hands and feet, unserviceable for any other purpose than that of wearing the smallest sized gloves and boots, is by no means accepted as our English female type. Such fragility, when met with, is regarded with curiosity; our inner yearning is for the fully grown, rosy-cheeked, alert woman, whose existence seems to excite such abhorrence in circles which we hope will remain limited. The spectacle of a well-dressed woman knows no peer in the eye of man, but far distant be the day when the female form divine is to be considered in no other light than as a lay figure for the display of the art of the modiste.

The changed condition of things calls for fresh means of building up and preserving a healthy constitution. When we fail in attaining this end we shall disappear from the face of the earth as a nation. And when we come to talk of the national health there can be no differentiation between man and woman. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The mothers of the future, England must be sound and healthy, and this a judicious participation in athletic exercises tends to make them.

The woman who has participated in games or other athletic exercises has unconsciously gone through a course of training that is calculated to make her fit to meet the increased demand upon all who would succeed. The censors tell us that the woman who devotes herself to games never can succeed in anything else; her time is too wholly engrossed by her daring pursuits. This is assuming that anyone playing assiduously at lawn tennis or golf, or practising figure skating with the view of obtaining a high pitch of excellence, or of gaining some particular honor, has the need for other distinction.

The man and woman of leisure are not wasting their own and the world's time by prosecuting some sport or pastime, even though it be to the exclusion of many other things. It is curious, were it not the way of the world, that those who cast blame upon others for a devotion to games do not see that it is far better that they should have this than the army of incompetents in our art schools and musical colleges. They might even, instead of attacking women for indulging in athletic pursuits, animadvert upon the way in which so many have taken of late years to following racing.

Women, as lookers-on, have always been welcome at race meetings, but nowadays they are not satisfied with mere spectatorship, but insist upon plunging into the bustle of the betting ring, where of course they are quite out of place. Here is plenty of room for the satirist, or moralist, or both. The "Monstrous Regiment" of women is never so pronounced as at present day race gathering within reach of the metropolis, sometimes to the partial obliteration of the male element.