"SYMPTOM-OR DISEksE?

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 86, 10 April 1924, Page 4

"SYMPTOM-OR DISEksE?

m \ f°yato», the Auckland Magistrate,- S ay S it i s » n o w agues . toon whether the State will control gambling, or if the State'" The remark was prompted by the case /.ot a young man found guilty of embezzlement of two small sums the moneys of the Crown, his employer.. The: case, in the.w.ords of the Magistrate,, was' " another instance of a good man gone wrong through our natural asininity of betting. " Then .Mr. Poynton read a list of recent conviction's of Public servants convicted of various' crimes." owing to this cause.'? Bet-, ting he described as a moral.plague making ,havoc in the community. Bnt is not betting rather a symptom of a plague, than a plague in itself? It is to be inferred from Mr. Poynton's remarks that the elimination of betting would substantially reduce, if not altogether prevent, the rather alarming grqwth in the convictions for defalcations. It is extremely doubtful if this..would be so. There must be more people losing ; by betting who do not steal to make good their deficiency than those who dip their hands into their employers' tills for the same purpose. - Betting, when if passes the point that makes a difference in a man's weljbeing, is a symptom of, disease of his moral fibre.' There lies ' the seat of hja trouble. Education which is mainly confined to utilfty has failed to effect a cure of diseased moral fibre, for betting was never more prevalent among' the public of Great Britain, and the Dominions' than it is to-day, and illiterates are now exceeding^ rare as compared with their frequency thirty or forty years ago. : The symptoms will disappear with the cure of the disease. Gambling i§ a vice, and in its aggravated form but'one'manifestation of a diseased moral condition. The real task of the time for all responsible for the fashioning of the characters of the men and women of to-~ morrow is how to arrest the growth of disease in the moral fibre. That task is urgent. . - ,