CARDS AND THE BENCH.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 193, 15 August 1931, Page 17

CARDS AND THE BENCH.

Magistrate Who Lived for Poker. “ EXTRAORDINARY ” EDICT On the heels of a cabled report of ati English minister’s condemnation of beach pyjamas, comes a message from Bucharest to-day stating that the Minister of Justice in Rumania has denounced card playing as a degrading practice. It looks as though the ghost of conscience is abroad in the Old World. Plumbing the depths of iniquity, the Rumanian Minister of Justice has found card playing at the bottom of every, thing. He forbids magistrates to play and orders them to resign from card clubs. Disobedience of his orders means deprivation of fifteen days’ salary and liability to dismissal. Of course, from this distance it is not possible to say what made such an order necessary. A Christchurch magistrate, interviewed to-day, expressed the opinion that perhaps the magistrates and judges in Rumania played a. better game than the Minister, and the Minister wanted to clear away opposition. “Extraordinary,” he said in giving a verdict on to-day’s cable. He pointed out that there was no order against the Ministei. A Poker Expert. There certainly seems little possibility of a similar edict being issued in New Zealand, where judges and magstrates of the present day are always circumspect and self-respecting. Not so long ago, a Christchurch magistrate had one pet vice, and that was poker. He was an inveterate player, and it has been said that he lived for the game. Many years spent in sitting in judgment on the sins of others gave him plenty of practice at preserving a straight face and he carried his unbroken calm into the midst of the poker school to the devastation of his friends, and the feathering of his own nest. But, times have changed. No magistrate or judge of this city plays poker to-day, but it is not giving away a secret to say that magisterial bridge, a very high-class game, is plaj’ed by a select few on evenings after all the sinful ones have been placed safely away under lock and key. No one will condemn them. They are a law unto themselves, and if one should be guilty of an indiscretion—say, a revoke—the qthers would haVe no difficulty in fixing a punishment to fit the crime. “The Bench would lose much of its authority if its members were to play cards at night clubs and other such places,” said a Christchurch magistrate this morning, “but within their own home it is a form of recreation that they can all enjoy. To remove this would be asking a great deal.” (A Bucharest cablegram dealing with card-playing appears on Page 1.)