BETTING ON THE RACES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16463, 16 June 1919, Page 2

BETTING ON THE RACES.

TO THB EDITOR. Sir,—Yonr contributor ‘ ! Delta,” in the course of his article upon the above-named subject, expresses the opinion that betting, and gambling generally, are indulged in by 'many people as a relief from the monotony of their existence, and indicates that at least partial deliverance from so false a philosophy is to bo found along the lines of a more liberal and universal education. With this view of the case most thinking people will be inclined to agree. Persons whose minds remain undeveloped and who fall to have vision of what they might otherwise become,; will, without doubt, be very. likely to find life a sufficiently dull and stagnant business. Untrained, and consequently without desire, to think, their minds are left with a craving, a sense of want, and this finds a certain relief in excitement such as the gambling habit affords. To ffn educated person it becomes almost, if not quite, incomprehensible how anyone possessed of ordinary intelligence and enjoying a reasonable amount of health and strength can find life in such a world as this in any degree monotonous. As “Michael Pairless” has well shown in “Theßoadmonder,” it is altogether possible and even, natural for an educated man to find life teeming with interest for him, though he be engaged in so prosaic a task as napping stones. Not even the enforced inactivity of a sick-bed could deprive Robert Louis Stevenson of the keenest delight in the world around him. Such people, whatever their circumstances in life, never find it necessary to summon to their aid such excitements as may be found by employing the totalisator and sweepstake. “Delta,” however, does not go deep enough when he ascribes the gambling habit, on the part of even uneducated people, to a desire to “break the dull round” of life. Possibly be realised this when he wrote of education providing “a partial cure” for the gambling customs of New Zealanders; for it is certain that an education, which, aims only at intellectual development and fails to ta,ka cognisance of the threefold need of men as physical, intellectual, and spiritual beings can never achieve more than a limited cur® for siich a hindering and degrading evil as the mania for gambling, which has gripped so many of the people of this Dominion. When due consideration is given to such things as man’s various and wonderful faculties (of which, be it remembered, the religious faculty is in every way as real and as important as any other), to his capacity for development in all these, to his sublime environment and to the apparently illimitable heights of know, ledge which ho is able to scale, it will be seen that, if deliverance from Tow and debasing ideals and habits is to be attained by the people, it is not enough to point, out to them the imbecility of gambling, or of any other evil habit; nor will it suffice to give them oven an improved education which fails to develop every department of their being. Men, are so "made that we must look deeper than to a mere demand for excitement in their natures if wo would account for the existence of such habits as betting and gambling. These things arise, not primarily from a paucity of education, as commonly understood, but from a most serious negleot of the spiritual side of human nature and- of its demands. One inevitable result of this neglect is that earnest and practical consideration of the highest welfare of others falls out of sight. It may seem a’- small thing to pocket a fe>v shillings or' pounds won as a bet on the races, but it only appears so because the starved and neglected religious ’ nature utterly fails to appreciate all -that is involved in the transactions. “Delta” admits that "those who attend churches” do not bet, but he does not say why they do not. The reason is, not because they find a supposedly needful excitement elsewhere than in the betting ring; nor is it because they have' any superior amount of intellectual education, but because, whatever their faults and failings, they have not utterly neglected their religious faculties, and, as a result, they find that to take anything from a fel-low-being by way of a bet becomes an entirely foreign and indeed impossible transaction; just because it would express failure on their-.part to consider others; and consideration of others, to the man whose religious faculty is developed, becomes not only a habit but an absolute necessity. If your able contributor will widen Ms ideal,, so as to embrace an education which aims at making all-round men and women, he will have before his mind the true and only cure, not for the gambling habit merely, but for every evil which hinders progress and blights the souls of men. I trust, sir, that the importance of the subject may find warrant for my trespass upon your space.—l am, etc., OSCAR BLUNDELL. The Manse, New Plymouth.