GAMBLING MADE EASY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 145, 21 June 1926, Page 6

GAMBLING MADE EASY.

We know that it is not possible to make a people moral by Act of Parliament, still, there is a point where liberty becomes license, and that point seems to have been reached in the orgy of gambling now in progress in the Dominion. Quite apart from the totalisator, which, in itself, offers more than a sufficient outlet for the gambling instinct which admittedly is inherent in human nature, the Dominion has been swamped by a plethora of "art" unions. surprise packets, and mis-called games of Skill, a legacy from the Dnnedin Exhibition which has drifted north over the whole Dominion.

The way was deliberately opened by the Government in issuing permits for art unions, which on their face were, masquerading. Once the barrier was down naturally everybody who could find a cause to help rushed in, and the result was that from schoolboy to grand dame the whole community was familiarised with a system that saps the roots of thrift, and is destructive of moral fibre. Without further shilly-shallying or halfmeasures such as they have proposed by the elimination of '"mineral specimens" froi.i the prize list, the Government should realise its responsibility aud refuse licenses to thinly-veiled gambles. To thinking people the most distressing feature of the wave of "speculation" sweeping over the Dominion is that it has not been checked at the doors of the churches, but seems to have actually caught certain church activities in its eddies.