A PLEA FOR GAMBLING.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 274, 18 November 1910, Page 6

A PLEA FOR GAMBLING.

) , <To the Editor.. ' Sir, —In your report of the Hon. J. Riggs' speech on the new Gaining Act, your reporter jocularly termed that gentleman an iconoclast—a breaker of images—because he maintained A sane attitude, and advocated, not the impossible annihilation of gambling, but the substitution of State sweepstakes. .This idea is, of course, toy no means original, and is not without a redeeming grace. As the hon. gentleman remarks, "the Soate should seek to regulate gambling for the benefit of those indulging in it rather than to suppress it by enactment." It may possibly be termed heresy, but it has always appeared to mc that the so-called "gambling spirit" is a. spirit of vitality—possibly, it is true, misapplied and mis-directed, but, none-the-less, an indication of a living force—the soul's eternal groping, grasping, longing for some non-possessed possession. Young rulers seeking the path of life, do not suppress gambling, but slowly, gradually, elevate it, and from its seered, battered bulk allow to be grafted, subtly, a longing, not for wealth alone, for position and for honour and for justice.—l am, etc., LESTER F. GUBB.