A Game Sustained

117 Struggling through to the end: 1918 adjoin many busy munitions works. This development is most marked where a fair proportion of boys under 18 are employed, and round factories cricket and tennis may now be seen in full swing.’ The ubiquitous J.J.Boothwas an ardent supporter of the value of recreation to the employer. He described those at home as ‘His Majesty’s working forces’ and considered employers had a duty to keep people fit so as to perform better at work. Later in the summer he expressed a remarkably modern vision of sport. Arguing that the human brain and body could only withstand the prolonged strain of mental and physical activity up to a point, he said that attending a cricket match: gives zest to one’s enjoyment and rest to one’s nerves. The very air is charged with the magnetic influences which emanates from a crowd of people concentrated on one thing, and we feel galvinised into a new power which not only has its physical and mental value at the workshop or factory during the following week. Booth noted that during the war the country’s military leaders had appreciated that recreation, including cricket, was needed by the armed forces, and the government, after ‘senseless attempts to compel the industrial forces to work at greater pressure for longer hours’, had realised the importance of games for workers during their leisure hours. Consequently, munitions factories were laying out cricket, football and hockey fields, and the Home Office encouraged councils to support local societies providing recreation. The same department had got H.M.Treasury promises of financial support for sport from industry excess profits. Booth said it was the first time that government had subsidised cricket, but feared the country was now suffering from the reality of the poor conditions in which so many children were brought up. 75 A third – and to somepeople,more threatening – development during the summer of 1918 was the brief appearance of baseball in towns around the county. The arrival of the United States into the war in 1917 and the presence of