PIETY AND PENURY.

Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 50, 21 August 1915, Page 3

PIETY AND PENURY.

Wickedness and Wealth.

THE wicked people of New Zealand have been raising too much money for wounded soldiers, patriotic funds and dependants of the killed. The good people of New Zealand 1 have succeeded in putting a spoke in the wheels of kindness, and one avenue of help to stricken people is to be closed. For many months the people have been allowed to return to normal. They have been allowed to "raffle" various valuable things' to raise funds for various kindly activities. Presbyteries and those kind of large-heart-ed institutions have raised horrified protests. They have not troubled about the good that is to be done with the money, but the evil that is being done with the gambling. Don't save a body, brothers, save a soul. It is typical of New Zealand that it cheerfully goes on its natural way until some hard-faced society or other screams out that the natural way is the path to Hell. It is entirely typical that when these hard-faces scream loud enough and long enough a Government discovers it has allowed its own laws to be broken.

After permitting raffles and what not for many months, Mr Massey, in an access of piety induced by screams from our moral brethren, declares that raffles must be put down, and therefore the natural man has a set back and the abnormal ones a victory. Tens of thousands of pounds of "polluted" money have been raised! by "gambling" for charitable purposes. The flow is to be stopped. Raffles for motor cars, for pieces of land, for houses and so forth mu6t cease. Holiness has returned, the kirk has fired its shot about the Government's sanction, "to the robing of the demon of gambling in the white —alas blood-stained —robes of the true patriot. It is perhaps difficult to see how the contribution of half-a-crown to a charity and a small chance of winning a prize, stains the white sheet of the demon of gambling with blood—but the Auckland Presbytery says so—and the Auckland Presbytery disna gamble, ma freen's, not even in business, ye ken!

The Holy Wullies, with the aid of an obedient Willie in Parliament, have been able to stop Hawke's Bay from raising £10,000 for the Wounded Soldiers' Fund. And the Wullies ought to be very proud of it. It is a moral victory. But we shall tell you what the Holy Wullies and the Premier and all the rest of them not do. They can't stop gambling. They merely infuriate the public and

upset the public's activities in the interarte of the truest charity that was ever organised. If the Premier was to be brought to heel by the Wullies in August, 1915, on moral grounds, he should have forbidden raffles on legal grounds in August, 1914. He shuts the stable door when a couple of dozen horses have escaped and infuriates the owners of the steed that is locked' up at the instigation of the protesters.

No one would mind if the Wullies had the least chance of stopping gambling. Their attacks of years are futile. Charity gambling is fair game and suits them, and in the end wounded soldiers ar.. their victims. To show how large the chance of the Wullies is in their endeavour to wash the souls of normal people as white as their own you must take the Grand National tote returns. Here's the extract: "The totalisator. registered £43,386 during the day, as against £38,517." You see, the protesters against innocent raffles haven't the least effect on the diesire of the people to gamble. They simply make people and one supposes endeavour to justify their "good works." When the present generation of Wullies with scourges for tongues arid stones for heart are all underground, normal people will do exactly as tbey please without reference to the new generation of Wullies. The Wullies are nearly always acute business people who really do."lay up for yourselves treasure upon earth." One merely wants these acute Christians to publish returns of the money they have personally contributed to the sick and wounded soldiers' funds, together with the return of the money raised by "gambling" for the same purpose. One pound raised) by "gambling" for the relief of a wounded soldier is "polluted" money but threepence raised by prayer is holy. Which of the two would the soldier rather have?