RACING AND WAR.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVI, Issue 16231, 29 March 1917, Page 6

RACING AND WAR.

A great many people will feel sympathy with the -protest which has been made by the Mavor of limaru against a state of things which allows racing-, in war time, to come before the work of an important industry, and with the answer which the Minister of Agriculture has made to the Protest. The President of the Racing. Conference, Sir George Clifford, has defended undiminished racing with arguments, well known to the general public, that would be admirable, though they would Jiot be needed, at any other time. Their weakness is that all the utility of racing would still be afforded by a much smaller measure of the sport, to which 22-3 days were devoted in the racing year now closing. special illustration is. required to show that when other interests clash with that of racing the other interests have small chance of coming first, and, though the public is helped and not hindered by a reasonable amount of pleasure during war time, bounds must be set to pleasures when the first need is national concentraRacing has been reduced m Great Britain, and it.is not only the natural enemies' 5 whose pleas might be disregarded, but staunch friends of the snort, like Ifr Guinness and the Hon. Mr Mac Donald, in no "small number, who tliihk that, while the war continues, it should be reduced here. That feeling has grown in the last twelve months, and the reduction will in any case be unavoidable when the reduced roilway services, made necessarv bv the war, come into force.'