PATRIOTIC RAFFLES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 92, 19 April 1941, Page 8

PATRIOTIC RAFFLES

CHURCH LEADERS' REPLY

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —The letter appearing in your issue of April 16 signed by the chairman of the Victory Queen Carnival calls for a reply. We would, in the first place, assure your correspondent that our letter to which he refers expressed not merely our own personal ideas,but the convictions of the vast majority of the members of our .respective churches. Your correspondent speaks of certain unnamed "leading theologians" who support his* argument. We on the contrary have never, come across any leaders in the Christian church who give countenance to such opinions. . We know too that we are voicing the deep convictions of very many people both within the churches and without. • . . • ,

The witness of history and of certain nations today, is to the morally' and spiritually pauperising power of gambling. Recall Machiavelli's reply to a certain prince who wanted to know how he could ruin a rival nation: "Teach them to gamble." Some years ago there was published by the Professors of Economics then in the four University Colleges of New Zealand a Memorandum on the Economic Aspect of Racecourse Gambling. Included in their unanimous findings were the words: !"The desire to gain something' for nothing strikes at the root of economic and social progress, and gambling is therefore essentially antisocial. The prevalence of legalised and illegal gambling in the Dominion constitutes a serious menace to social wellbeing. . . . On all grounds gambling must be reckoned anti-social and injurious to the welfare of the community." If it is anti-social it is wrong and cannot be justified on any count,

And if it be asked at this stage we should select gambling as the subject of our protest, while so many, other evils abound, our reply is that we are confronted with the fact that it is in the name of patriotism and of a righteous cause that this particular evil is at the present time being encouraged on a wide scale. Whatever may be said of a lack of response to a patriotic appeal, it can never be claimed that we are justified in resorting to means that are "anti-social and injurious to the welfare of the community." ■

That the Victory Queen Carnival should be successful is" raising the necessary funds for so great a cause is our sincere hope and the organisers are assured of our wholehearted support in their tremendous task. But it remains our deep conviction that if the methods adopted for the raising of such funds are at the expense of the moral tone of the community, then the cost is too great.—l am, etc., HERBERT WELLINGTON, On behalf of the Church Leaders who were signatories to the letter of April 9. April 18.