THE RAT ALSO RUNS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20107, 28 March 1928, Page 6

THE RAT ALSO RUNS

’J’HK pursuit of the electric hare has become so popular that it has attained the melancholy status of a social problem. Now the hare itself is to be pursued in the race for favour.

The electric rat has entered the ring at a London sporting club, and men of rank and fashion solemnly sit in armchairs to watch terriers either chasing it in vain or chasing each other with more hope of results. It is at least true that the spectators of this pastime are. better engaged than were their forerunners in the ugly days when animals were baited as a spectacle. Nor in this case will the bookmakers be any the richer, since the patrons of the race bet among themselves on the totalisator.

But the example may be taken up with doubtful results. It is difficult to forecast whether the adding of rats to hares as a medium of gambling will increase and spread the fever or whether it will simply bring the fever to a crisis after which lassitude will set, in and the patient will be too bored to support the machine-made chase any longer.

Of course if the passion for instituting these native substitutes for the casino is sufficiently strong there is no limit to the amount of available spectacles. Cats might be too sagacious to follow electric mice or sparrows, but donkeys would surely take the track after an electric carrot.

The vital question is the number of human donkeys who can think of nothing better to do with their evenings and their pocket-money.