Football is in England a winter game, for it requires considerable activity. Cricket is more especially the national game, and it is a game which, as you know, the English carry with them into every corner of the globe, including the tropics. The great Colony of Australia is not everywhere tropical, but as a whole it is much warmer than the home country. Cricket is played there with much zest. Now, because Australia is in the south and Britain in the north, their seasons are reversed. Therefore, during the Australian winter a cricket eleven is often sent to England, where it arrives during the northern summer. This is a cricket match, played before many spectators between England and Australia.
42.
Oxford and Cambridge Athletics—The Hurdles.
43.
Finish for the Half Mile.
There are many other athletic contests in which strength and skill are matched. Here, for instance, is a race between representatives of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Even in this contest, where one man only can win, the English do not say simply that he won the race, but they say that he won it for Oxford or Cambridge, as the case may be. Part of the glory is not his, it belongs to the University which trained him. Here is the finish of another race.
44.
Ladies Playing Hockey.
Lastly, we must not forget that half the nation consists of women. The English like their women to play games, and to learn lessons of courage and self-control which shall make them brave and helpful wives in foreign countries or on the borders of the Empire. These ladies are playing the game of hockey. Probably, they are students at one of the Universities, for it is felt that women require intelligence no less than men, if they are to be the wise mothers of a race of rulers.
LECTURE V.
