WANTED: THE PLAY-SPIRIT

What is it that drives us, the bulk of us, ordinary, undis-
tinguished humanity, to places of Entertainment?

What human characteristic is it that decides the crowds in
the theatres, music halls and picture palaces? A number of motives
may be mentioned and may account for certain sections of the vast
army of humanity which is steered nightly in all our large towns
through the magic doorways. But motives which vary, which can be
distributed here and there amongst the crowd and depend upon cir-
cumstances, cannot account for the blind, uniform, instinctive move-
ment of the increasing herd of "pleasure seekers," as they are
sometimes vaguely called.

There must be some fairly universal decisive factor, some inner
urgency, conscious or unconscious, to account for the punctual de-
livery of this meek, well-drilled body of all sorts and conditions
of people into the hands of the amusement caterers.

A keen student of human psychology, and a lecturer in English
literature, offers this possible explanation: that young people
in their teens like to have both prose and poetry read to them with-
out comment or explanation. They will retain what interests them
and be able to reproduce the salient features, certain pictures
standing out in the narrative and comprehensible by them. They will
remain happy and interested as long as these alternating processes,

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the reading and the recollecting of interesting bits, form the main
work of their "literature class." Older students, however, though
also capable of interest and appreciation of things read to them,
like best of all the teachers's commentary on the thing read, a pro-
cess which the younger people will scarcely tolerate.

The lecturer in English literature concludes from this experi-
ence of his that the cinemas are, roughly speaking, full of "children"
those who like a mere presentation, without comment, of life's whirli-
gig, and that the theatres are full of those who like life, life not
as they live it in single moments and days, in slow-forming months
and years, but condensed, played out before them in the form of drama,
which is, even at its crudest and roughest, a sort of Commentary on
Life.

But how many of us, how many cinema and theatre "goers" get
"lively" satisfaction out of their evening's entertainment - how many
come home roused and interested, with quickened circulation and heigh-
tened consciousness - how many sleep soundly with the sense of having
taken a fresh hold on life?

We are not, as a whole, interested in life, we are driven hither
and thither in the hope of getting away from it. We want stimulants
and drugs. There cannot, surely, be any doubt of this. Walk down
the queue outside any London theatre, watch the crowds streaming into
the picture palaces, and the strongest impression left with you will
be that of the expression of emptiness and boredom on most of the

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faces - emptiness and boredom varied here and there by that wretched strained look in the eyes that means expectation of excitement. But for the most part ox emptiness - absolute emptiness.

And it is the creation of this emptiness that is the worst result of spending our leisure in "Places of Entertainment." The picture palace, the theatre which could be no doubt wisely used, both a vision for "children" and a "commentary" for others, and, we might add, a thing of beauty for both; become, once we allow them to be an occupation - nothing less than a drug, something we must have to give our empty or over-stremuous existences some touch of something we lack, a glow, a distraction - we miss the whole point of life, we miss life itself, for we have no time to live, we who spend four-fifths of the day in work and the rest in "looking on." We remain undeveloped, our faculties grow first dormant, then atrophied.

We must learn to play. We must be personal in our amusements. They are, for most of us nowadays, all we can call, even in the narrowest sense, our own. They are our one opportunity of developing our faculties, of learning about life and about ourselves - they are our one little plot of "freehold."

Amusements, as most of us have them at present catered for us, at so much a head, are dead loss of life. Life, indeed, has grown to many of us a poor thing - because we ourselves have grown poor. We have no stake anywhere. We are tired, helpless bits of the machinery of business life, tired, helpless bits of the machinery of home life. We are dying, in so far as this is all, dying

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individually and collectively. But there is the margin, there are
the divine faculties hidden within us, and there is - leisure, be
it ever so little, for some. If we will, we can, with that little
lever of leisure, transform ourselves and move away in time the
mountains that obstruct the way to freedom. People who can "play",
who know the joy that comes from faculties trained and controlled
and used, will not long tolerate slavery.

PLAIN TALK, July, 1913.