GAMBLING POOLS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 150, 28 June 1938, Page 9

GAMBLING POOLS

HYMNS AT FOOTBALL EMOTIONAL CROWDS A BISHOP'S COMMENTS (From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, June 1. The Bishop of Liverpool edits the Liverpool Diocesan Review. In the June issue there are comments about hymns sung at football matches, as well as about "gambling pools." The Bishop draws attention to "a profit of abtiut nine millions" reaped by pools promoters. "The football season over, it appears from advertisements that there are to be racing and cricket pools," the journal states. "It was not to be expected that any avenues for extending a business so profitable to its promoters would be overlooked or neglected. It is estimated that some 62 of these gentry, as a reward for their services to the community the season just ended, have divided a profit of about £9,000,000, no doubt in very unequal proportions. This sum has been gratuitously handed, to them by about a third of the stolid adult population of Britain. The latest form of the gambling craze has also brought employment to an increasing body of professional tipsters. "The gambling mentality is notoriously incapable of appreciating the mathematical doctrine of chances. But one might suppose that the most sanguine stupidity would be daunted by the fact that some coupons can be filled up in over 14,000,000 ways, and that only 25 completely correct forecasts were given in 330,000,000 attempts in. fifteen weeks. Whatever the merit# or otherwise of what is called the entertainments tax, it is a tax not upon profits but upon receipts, and if this colossal gambling ramp is to be permitted there can be no reason why it should not make to the State a contribution proportionately equal to that levied upon theatre and cinema tickets. UNREALITY IN WORSHIP. On the subject of hymn-singing by football crowds, the journal says:—• "We wish we could believe that certain forms of popular emotion were clear evidence of religious earnestness. None who have been present at the Cup Final at Wembley or have listened in to the singing of 'Abide With Me* by that vast crowd can have failed to be impressed. The Christian religion, however, needs more than emotion for its sustenance. A religion which requires the big occasion for its exercise, or the moment of crisis for its appeal, is of little value in the workaday world. True religion requires no adventitious aids to worship; it works in the most unfavourable surroundings —sometimes, indeed, in opposition to the crowd. If religion is to be of everyday worth it must be based on reality. "In any case, is 'Abide with Me' an appropriate hymn to sing at the Cup Final? Lustily to sing 'Hold Thou Thy Cross Before My Closing Eyes' seems to us specially inappropriate when we remember the widespread neglect of Good Friday observance, and the fact that many of the principal foot, ball matches are played on Good Friday. We wonder what the effect would be if a cross were to be set up in the midst of the stadium jlurihg the sing, jng of the hymn? "On the occasion of the Cup Final we should prefer the singing of such a hymn as 'Praise God From Whom all Blessings Flow' or 'Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven.* We welcome any and every sign of popular interest in re* ligion, but we fear the danger of unreality in worship."