Racing as a Pastime.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18237, 22 November 1924, Page 12

Racing as a Pastime.

The Melbourne "Argus" had something to say on Cup Day which could with advantage be said again. Realising that a great gathering likq that assembled at Flemington was '' some- " thing more than either odds or "horses," it argued that the event remained the people's day, and that "the best proof of that lay in the fact "that the hardened gambler resented "the intrusion! of the thousands who "attended the Cup merely for a day's "pleasure." Neither the "Argus" nor any other responsible newspaper denies that some people spend more money at tho races than they or the community can afford, but tho excess of the few is neither the result of, nor a warning against, the quite healthy enjoyment of the many. "Whatever "moralists may say or think, the fact "remains that normal people attend "races in appropriate times and "places." And the fact remains also, the "Argus" might have added, that normal people have no more genius for Puritanism than the morally abnormal have for charity. Lest wo should appear to say ono thing and mean another, we will jut the position quite simply, and say that if every racecourse in Australia and New Zealand could be closed this year we should not expect to see better Australians and New Zealande'rs next year, or any year. We should in fact expect, if it were not certain that other equally non-moral ways , of escape would.be found, that in a very short time both groups of people would have ! deteriorated. For it is common sense, I aa -well as the verdict of experience, that if 60 or 70 per cent, of any community are cribbed, cabined and confined- witJiin walls of restraint that they hate, they will wear their own and their neighbours' virtue threadbare. Thoy will do it even if they approve of the restraint without loving it, as the history of asceticism proves; but they will do it ten times more rapidly and more disastrously when the" restraint is artificial and external. Wc do not know what Furr-

tans think the average man is made of; but wc suspect, from what they so fatuously seek to make of him, that thev have long ceased to know what moderation means in anything or in anybody. At Flemington, as here at Biccarton and Addington, every man is free to overeat and over-drink, though very few man do ono or the other; and it ia precisely the same with laying the odds. "The vast majority neither "lay the seeds of nervous dyspepsia "nor spend money wantonly that "should be devoted to other purposes"; for the vast majority are neither saints nor gluttons nor fools. And as tho "Argus" sagely remarks, if they are fools it is not Taring that has made them so. Racing has made quite as many wise as it has robbed of wisdom, though it never gets credit for that, while those who persist in gambling to the extent of folly do so, not because racing has corrupted them, but because they suffer from a radical weakness that experience cannot cure.

Public interest in Italy is so occupied with Fascist activities that an account in a Milan paper of a pathetic attempt to save from destruction ono of the world's great paintings passed almost unheeded. Almost everyone must have seen a print of Leonardo's "Last Supper" and must know enough about its beauties and perfections to realise just what it means to the world, and to future generations, that such a master work should be perishing. Great pictures in which genius and perfection in execution are combined as they are in the "Last Supper" are so scarce that the loss of one of them is a serious thing for the world: once lost they are gone forever, for, unlike books and music, the originals cannot be copied. Many thousands of people, also, treasure the thought of tho "Last Supper" because the subject it portrays is to them sacrod and all-important.

From the first the environment of the work was such that it was impossible for it to endure. Leonardo, it has been said, painted on a wall surface which he knew was not properly prepared, and then painted as if he were dealing with canvas. And for four, centuries after the work was finished, the refectory in the convent church at Milan where it was carried out was kept well warmed and the room on the other side of the wall chilled, so that moisture condensed on the painting as it does on the window of a room in cold weather. Ignorant soldiers in Napoleon's Army speeded the work of destruction. When billeted in the room, they threw bricks at the wall to show their scorn for religion. And tourists have been known actually to lean ladders against the painting so that they might display their appreciation by studying its details. The end of it all was that the paint began to crack and peel and fall away.

For many years experiments of various kinds were tried in a vain endeavour to restore the vanishing glories of the work. A bacteriologist was even engaged once. Now the most we can hope for is that the wreck can be saved from going utterly to pieces. And if careful and painstak'ng work has any effect this will be achieved, for everything that can be done to hold the painting together is being done. The flakes of discoloured paint are treated first with petrol and then with resin to unfold them and make them adhere to the wall. Then they are electrified, ironed, sponged, reinforced, and finally brushed clear of dust. In fact, if the master himself had exercised a very small part of the care which is now .being expended on his picture—and why he did not no one can say—it would have been a living thing to-day instead of a patched-up, dosed, and ironed travesty of its early glory.