RACING AND A DREAM

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 123, 26 May 1928, Page 21

RACING AND A DREAM

"What I Enow" (Sydney: Cornstalk Publishing Company) consists of' reflections on horse-racing bY an Australian professor of philosophy, who prefers to remain anonymous. For twenty years, ho says, ho attendee! race meetings in Sydney and Melbourne, and in places of lesser importance, and ho to have, hud mucli experence, some of the Turf until in middle age, and "no child (lie writes) could have known loss about racing and betting than I did.". His first meeting Mvas at Warwick Farm, and since then he professes to have had much experience, some of it moderately expensive, with the result that, as "a philosophic punter," he advises his fellow-citizens not to go to

races at all, as it is a game for mugs and millionaires; but if they must go, then they should not bet; if they, must bet, then they should bet on but one race; and if they can't help betting, then they should begin small and stop at a profit. The chief interest of tho little book, however, centres not so much in horse-racing as in the writer's reflections upon the various sections of the Christian religion and their "race" for superiority, if not for supremacy. Like tho inspired tinker in Bedford Gaol, but under, vastly different circumstances, the author "fell suddenly into an allegory." He dreamt of a Great Cosmic Mystery Cup run at Randwick. . In racing parlance he describes tho "running" of the various " 'isms" in the similitude of horses —Materialism, Thcosbphy, Unitarianism, AngloCatholicism, Roman Catholicism, Christian Science, Methodism, and othe^ entrants in tho great race. It is graphically done, and incidents of the race arc described as sporting writers usually chronicle them —and the finish? The judge puts up no numbers of the leading horses, but instead three boards reading—l "The Last Shall be First" —2 "We Know in Part"; and 3 "Wait and See." Philosophy and humour are the main features of "What I Know." No one need imbibe the philosophy, but most readers will relish the humour of this book.