" SOFTS."
IF we may take some recent letters in the Standard as evidence, the fierce reaction against athletics which broke out some years ago, and of which Mr. Wilkie Collins made himself the prophet, has at last spent its force. Young men have ceased to be brutes, we are told, and have become what active officers in the Army are accustomed to style " Softs." The writers of the letters evidently hope to be believed when they charge the youth of to-day, and especially the youth of the middle class, with a tendency to shirk Volmiteeri g, to avoid active sports, to seek amusement in " ladylike " games, such as lawn-tennis, and to watch cricketers and oarsmen in their contests, rather than to use either bat or oar for themselves. They have, in short, say the writers of the objurgations, forsworn all manly pursuits, and given themselves up once more to luxury, to sloth. We should like to hear the opinion of the Head-Masters of Public Schools, when they next assemble for their annual Conference, upon that unexpected indictment ; but for ourselves, we must Say that, at all events as regards its latter half, we do not believe it in the least. There may be, we think there is, more disposition to luxury among the young, produced partly by the increase of wealth, partly by the develop- ment of a certain kind of selfish intelligence, the kind which deliberately tries to get out of every occupation all the enjoy- ment there is in it, and partly by the much greater tolerance of the old, who are still the purse-bearers of the community, for the fancies of the young even when they involve expense. There is an effort to keep them happy and amused, perceptible in almost all grades of society, coupled with a desire to leave them independent; and the two feelings together involve a cer- tain indulgence for daintiness in dress, in diet, and in the purchase of "appointments," for the appearance of laziness— not the reality—and for the avowed enjoyment of good tobacco. The indulgence does not extend to drinking, which, we should say, had as decidedly decreased among the young as among the old, those who believe the contrary taking no notice of the preference for light drinks over spirits, and the disuse of that eternal swilling of beer which a very few years ago marked active youth when• pursuing any sport not demanding training. There is, too—this must be admitted to the full—incomparably more solicitude for health as well as more comprehension of its laws, and this very often pro- duces an appearance both of softness and of self-indulgence. Young men are learning to hate wet feet, and to like hot batlis after severe exertion. For the charge of sloth, we see, how- ever, no foundation whatever. More men now than ever before give themselves up to country sports, more men are devoted to cricket, more engage in a form of football which every year elicits a chorus of complaints because it is so exceedingly dangerous and brutal. Football, as now played, is as " hard " a game as it used to be when it was really a sort of battle between hostile Northern villages, far harder than ever hockey was, or any form of running for wagers. Polo, which, though necessarily confined to men with money, has been introduced into England since Mr. Wilkie Collins wrote, has been regarded for three thousand years as the manliest of sports, and is certainly one which a " soft " will never engage in ; and we cannot learn or see that riding is either less hard or fearless. Golf, which is beginning to flourish in England, can hardly be called a young man's game, it being essen- tially, even at St. Andrews, the game of the active middle- aged who still love the open air, and who often develop for one of the most tiresome of all sports an over-mastering passion stronger even than that of the riding-men for the hunting-field. The young have, however, introduced two new exercises, both of which involve exertion, and both seem likely to maintain their popularity for years, possibly for generations. Why the critic in the Standard who com- ments on the letters, and who is in the main of our opinion, stigmatises lawn-tennis as ladylike," we can hardly con- ceive. Women can play it, no doubt, and do play it well, and the opening it affords for flirtation is, of course, one of its attractions ; but as now played by the young men, it involves continuous and severe exertion for all the limbs in the open air, and often for many hours in succession. Weak men who fancy the game easy because it looks so, go nearer fainting at lawn-tennis than they ever did at cricket, which involves long rests, and to compare it, as an exercise, with the game which preceded it, croquet, which was so popular and died so instantaneously, is palpably absurd. One might as well compare hockey with bowls, or cricket with pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham. The new exercise par excel- lence is, however, cycling, which has risen within six years to such importance, that the number of cyclists is counted by- the hundred thousand, that it has created an important new trade which almost maintains one great town, and that it has in many places revived that convenient but dying institution, the road-side inn. Cycling on two wheels is an exceedingly hard and rather dangerous form of exercise, and cycling on three, though not so dangerous, taxes the muscles more than riding, and is pursued for much longer periods of time. The doctors, indeed, are disposed to say a word about cycling and heart-disease of which the Coventry manufac- turers will not at all approve. There is, we imagine, less severe swimming than there was—we have not a notion why—but, on the other hand, the love of long walks, stretches across whole counties, has decidedly developed, and now attracts thousands who forty years ago thought, as villagers still think, that ten miles in one walk was an unconscionable "pull." Very few, perhaps, walk like Christopher North, but thousands can approach him where in his time there were only tens. Not only would half the young men in Oxford or Cambridge set out for a walk into Wales or Cornwall without trepidation or care, except for sufficient money to spend en route, but an enormous number of young Londoners would be equally ready, and very slow to acknowledge, after ten days of continuous effort, that they began to feel knocked-up." All this activity, moreover, is wholly independent of the ten- dency among the cultivated to emigrate and face in the two Americas or Australia the severe hardships of the settler's life. We regret that the golden youth of the day are so little attracted by Volunteering—a fact attested by the Lord Mayor in his recent appeal for a Volunteer Equipment Fund— though their place is efficiently supplied from a class a, few steps lower down ; but slothfulness is not the secret reason for their change of opinion. Indeed, we hardly under- stand why anybody believes it is. The correspondents of the Standard seem to imagine that sloth is to be feared', like many another vice, because it is enjoyable ; but they must surely be passing middle-age. Young Englishmen are no more slothful by choice than young deer are. The
young, so far as we can perceive, exert themselves, often over-exert themselves, just as young dogs in good health do,—because they like it, and feel in the animal spirits developed by exercise in the open air a reason for con- sidering that life is fully worth living, even on expensive terms. The young man of the day has health as he never had it in any previous period, and a healthy animal is always wanting to feel the power in its limbs. It wants to jump and to run and to climb, not to stand and gaze.
But, it is said, the number of " softs " increases, the number, that is, of young men who avoid, it may be dread, all severe physical exertion. So does the number of every other class ; and considering the proportion of consumptive, rickety, and scrofulous children who are now preserved by medical science and assiduous care, and who would even fifty years ago have been let die quietly, it would be wonderful if it were not so. There is a child in almost every large family who, on evolution principles, ought not to be alive, and, of course, when he reaches twenty, be avoids all violent exertion. One-third at least of the " degeneracy " in our great cities is not degeneracy at all, but the result of that survival of the unfittest for which all the conditions of modern life, the new hygienic precautions, the new treatment of infants, the new developments of medical science, so carefully provide. A large proportion of this kind of " softs " finds a useful place in the world, monopolises, or nearly monopolises, its lighter or half-intellectual work, and breeding a powerful progeny with a tendency towards thinking, benefits the race, which, be it remembered, tends of itself to revert to animalism, far more than it injures it. There remain, of course, the true " softs," the young men who are inactive out of vicious laziness, who hate physical exertion as savages hate it, who eat too much, drink too much, and loll about too much, who have a mortal fear, if not of danger, at least of discomfort, and who are very often, though not always, tainted with a proclivity towards a selfish voluptuousness of life. Schoolmasters, tutors, Colonels, and employers of labour all know the breed and dislike it, and we are bound to admit that such men are not for the most part curable by any known means. A few may be subjected to a radical cure by being sent to sea, but unhappily only a few. Temptation, if it involves exertion, has no effect on them, and they will lie to avoid physical effort, as opium-eaters lie to obtain their drug. They are very hopeless as a rule, though we have known men of the class develop a singular aptitude for sedentary industry; but are they more numerous than they were ? We fancy those who think so forget the past a little, how constantly they met the " softs " in country towns and villages, hovering about the open spaces, haunting the doorways of the inns, lounging in -any shops where talk was possible, the most helpless and the most disagreeable of dawdling triflers. In the country towns just before luncheon-time forty years ago, you could not move _five yards without meeting one or two. They have for the most part gone, swept away by the strop g competition of modern life, and its modern sense that a loafer of that kind ought to be ex- ported to South Africa to dig for diamonds or die, and with them have disappeared the men who "mooned" about the squire's paddocks and the farmer's garden, and were absolutely in- capable of anything, even of getting fully drunk. There are plenty of " softs " still, but not more, we think, than there were, and the tendency of life is to make them, if anything, a little fewer and a great deal more unhappy.
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