1 AUSTRALASIAN GAMBLIAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2860, 6 January 1909, Page 33

1 AUSTRALASIAN GAMBLIAN.

A VIGOROUS REJOINDER. (From Our London Correspondent.) j The dismal story of the immorality of 1 Australia an-l JS'ew Zealand which Miss Jcc^io Ackermaran ga\o to the Westminster Gazette recently, and wnieh Atr P. A Vaile rebutted lor .New Zealand, has no\v orawn a powerfully-written rejoinder signed " Mary Gaunt," a name well known I in tae colonies. The writer je very definite in her beliefs. She says:— The trouble with Australia is her isolation, the isolation of her people. ,' Ho few tfiere be who can look at things | from both dde 3of the sea. As Dr Parkin | once wisely said, the supercilious Englishj man and the buniptioua colonial are the j graat bar to the two nations understanding- ! each 'other properly. Australia has her • faults, but Miss Ackermann has certainly | lioi judged her justly. There is still the Englishman who, having: gone out in his young days, has exaggerated the delights and the virtues of the " Old Country." "Far fields are ever fair." and seeing the sins of the people around him, he is only too ready to complain and to give a handle to the stranger within his gate. There is in him still that spirit that in the early pare of the nineteenth century called the j native-born " currency " and the Englishj born " sterling," careless or indifferent to j the slur cast on the children. Australia gambles, but only as all the- world gambles. The only difference is that in the fervour of her youth she makes laws against it, lust as she gives women the vote, provides old-age pensions, and generally endeavours to right all the wrongs the Old World sees going on under her eyes and submits to I with complacency. I think there can be no question so far as the gambling craze is concerned that the Old World is every bit as bad as the new. I look out of my window aa I araito, and ! see staggering down the street a sandwichman. He bears on his shoulders a great placard with the name of a paper, the founder of which tfas, not so very long ago, honoured with a title, and the principle feature of that paper to which fhe advertisement is calling attention, is the fact that substantial sums of money are to be won by doing anagrams. Not_gp very longago it waft not possible to get out' of an omnibus without small children, veritable babies in arms, tumbling over one another in their eagerness to get your ticket. I'here was some chance of a money orize hidden, in those bits of cardboard. As for bridge —well, Father Vaughan has given ue Ms views as to the sins of society; let alone a certain well-known Anglican bishop, who js reported to have laid it down that " no young girl should play bridge for more thau panny points" For my ovrn experience in the matter, I once for a-week or so had rooms over a " dress agency," and, passing every day, I got to know the rather charming won Jan who m that way earned her living, and more than once I was present at the opening of the parcels that came in. I remember one, accompanied by a request for money by the return post. It contained two very nice sunshades, quite new, and some lovely Maltese lace. I expressed astonishment that such things should come in, but m 7(m 7 ( » u fmess woman smiled wisely. Bridge," aha said; " bridge debts that must oe paid. I have many women in here who don't hesitate- to tell me what they want the money for." Are these things small matters? They are but they make up the life of a- people. Miss Ackermann travailed across to- New Zealand with people going to the races, and it seems they talked about racing £°'do tli© people in the trains going to the Derby. Cl And no one blushed or hesitated in declaring on which horso money was to be laid." I really don't know why they should. They don't in England. I meet both men and women making books and looking out for a good thing, though I am bound to say that I never met, either here or in Australia, a small boy who had a gold coin to put on his own." I have travelled quite recently, too, in Engilish ships where they did not talk racing, it is true, but they put their money regularly and hsavjly into the sweepstakes on the run, and filied up the rest of their 'time with bridge and whisky poker, whatever that may be. But I do not think the- English race is going to the dogs on that account, though I am bound to say thero i\as en board mv last ship a person who thought the devil WB3 coming into his own. Yes, Australia gambles — gambles exactly as England does. In that she is ' chip of the yld block, but v the sunshine and the fresh air have given her people a vigour aiid a frank outspokenness somewhat foreign to the English character. They speak of the things they do, even of their sina when they count them venial, where an Englishman would hold his tonirue. They gamble under the Southern Cross because they do and have doire the same thing here from time immemorial, only in the Motherland, perhaps, having a. bigger population 'and less money, the greater part of the people do it in a sordid and more pitiful way, for I defy even Mies Ackermann to produce anything worse than that form of gambling the cheap press provides in England, which roaches all clashes, and swells the postal returns by the enormous sale of 6d postal orders. AustraJJa. gambles, and some of he* people raise their hands and try to stop it ; but if we did not strive there would bo an end to all life, and to ea-y that Australia, lets the gambling spirit sap her vitality is a most monstrous untruth, a misreading of all the signs of the times. Miss Ackermann forgot to look at the wealth of the young nation, a wealth that has been gained by sheer hard work and a proper application of the gambling spirit. Has she looked at the great cities, at Sydney and Melbourne, ea.rved out of t-be wilder ness? Did these grow without industry, without effort? Or, to take a ' much simpler example. The butter industry, especially in Victoria, is a most thriving one. And this is the fashion of its working. The farmers in a certain district, generally about a hundred in number, combine, subscribe £5000, and form a factory, where they, by their own milk and by rho aid of their own appointed officers, turn that milk, into butter. These, farmers hold from 100 to 250 acres I each; not large holdings, you see, and I have by me the returns of one factory — the Colac Butter Factorv — for the year before last. The farmers hol-ding- shares, and no one but a milk supplier can hold shares, paid themselves for their milk alone £146 ; 000 ! Doe 3 anyone suppose this

money was won without good hard work and intelligent application? And will not those farmers compare favourably with, farmers in any land? , But let me put in (a plea for the gambling spirit. Believe me, the gambling spirit in a people is not a bad one, for all that preachers rage against its manifestations. We can lay down no hard-and-fasfc rules. To seelj to reap eagerly where we have not sown is doubtless bad. but. after ail, it is very human, very common to all countries ,iand the gambling spirit, properly controlled, is only that love o£ excitement, that spirit of adventure, that sent, our fathers, into the wilderness. When the Vikings put off in their galleys from the rock-bound shores of the north were they not gambling, staking their lives for gold, or slaves, or merchandise? When. Epgland first 6ent her sons to the south, that far, far away south, that cut them off from all they held dear, were they nofc " doing the same thing? The pioneers took their- chances; the women who stood beside them took even greater chajices, for the frontier is hard on women and horses. One hundred and thirty years ago the first colonists were approaching Sydney Cove; 70 years ago there was not a shack on Porfc Phillip, where Melbourne now stands, andr now each of these citiea has over, half a million inhabitants. There must have been some honeet industry gone to their upbuilding, I fency, even if it was the gambling spirit that first took our fathersfrom their comfortable firesides to Australia's shores. And wJien the- pioneers pushed out. from the coast-line, daringdrought and flood and unknown dangersv leaving their bones that others might see the eitfn and paes that way, were they not ganabling too? And Australia, in her turn, sent her sons to Africa the other day -to help the Mother Country in a quarrel that wae none of hers — sent her very beet, with beating drums and waving flags and joyous shouting that drowned the sobs of the weeping women. The sending- made stronger the crimson thread of. Jcmship that oound her to the Motherland ; but for those who went it _ was a gamble nevertheless— a gamble in which the reward was small though life was the stake. But they went, and all the world applauds. No, Mi6s- Ackermann is wrong, end so ia the preacher. Australia gambles as England gambles, and she does it as she doea all things — a little more strenuously, because of her youth and' her vigour and her strength, and those who oppose, opposo more- strenuously for exactly the same reasons. But the gambling spirit is not a. sign of canker and weaknees; it is a sign, of vigour and strength. It is a sign she is Jiving — living and not stagnating. We gamble with our lives,* wo gamble. _ , with our loves, we lose, God help us, and* we learn to ween in secret, keep a straight face, and try again, working steadily, and taking what excitement we may. even i£ ib be in the form of a ticket for Tattersali's sweep. And for a nation, as for a man, I would pray, God give a good heart and the band of a gambler.