MARIE CORELLI INDICTS SOCIETY.

Evening Star, Issue 11726, 8 April 1902, Page 1

MARIE CORELLI INDICTS SOCIETY.

Miss Marie Corelli delivered a lecture on ‘The Kigns of the Times’ at Glasgow on February 20, before 5,000 people. Those by their superior birth, should be leading and inspiring their less fortunate brethren to-day were, she, said, becoming less and less worthy of respect. Kome of the most exalted sects were utterly degraded in the vice of gambling, and many of the houses of well-known titled persons were nothing less than gambling dens where honor was cast away and fortunes lost, in a few hours. The police could inspect dens kept by adventuresses, but they dare not cross the threshold of Lord Rascal and the Duke of Donothing. The mania for high bridge had caused already so much misery that Queen Alexandra had forbidden the very name ,to be mentioned in her presence. Women gambled more recklessly than men. and the debts contracted by certain distinguished ladies in a. year’s bridge, parties made an appalling total.' In- this exalted set millionaires and African speculators found easy admission. The gambling woman was a demoralising element in the social community, and a sorrow and shame. That such women should be, leaders of socieiy to-day boded ill for the social good. Germany insulted our army, contimied Miss Corelli ; Britain responded by putting her soldiers into the uniform of their slanderers, and we accepted a German design for onr new postage stamp. In the great British school of art there was not to be found an artist capable of drawing his King’s head ! And the Coronation medal was to be struck from a German design ! Britain was the refuge of the destitute, and also of the dastardly. Many foreigners who made fortunes in London took refuge under Scotch names, and in some London districts English was not heard.