LETTERS TO TEE EDITOR

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2369, 27 January 1915, Page 9

LETTERS TO TEE EDITOR

RACING AND THE MILK. Sir, —The war has been going strong in Europe, and the races in Wellington. By the side of the galloping timebreaker the captain's charger corvettes through the rnazd of military manoeuvre. A Territorial reaches for a proffered newspaper. "Hang news from the front; give us sport," and the racer goes on racing while the firing goes o"n at the front. The war is mad, and so is racing, and if there were no racing there would, be no wax, the same human obliquity producing both —that is, the perversion of mental vision which allows people to enjoy what is not theirs; in other words, that which they have in no- way earned. The above is termed "moralising," and moralising is detestable, but so long as it is thus categorised, racing will go on and war continue imminent and inevitable. So much for the universal, now for the particular. Everyone who dotes on racing thinks that everybody else ought to, and so much' the worse for them if they don't. Nowhere is this more evident than at Lambton. It is a race morning, and the milkman wants his milk. "Where will the milk' be landed?" is asked of a head official, and he replies, 'Over at the 'arrival.' " On the way to "the arrival" a porter you have met tells you it is down at Bnnny Street, and, seeing cans in the distance, you feel quite pleased with yourself, because times have been when you have chased round for hours look-, ing for what you have now found in a few minutes' (perhaps ?). Some is there, some has gone on to To Aro. The porter could not help it; he got out what he could, and the remainder had to go on. No one heeds you now, but you may use the telephone, and after ten minutes trying you think you have got them at last, but you haven't. All you have got is. "Aro the races being run to-day?" Thus,'when you get the telephone you get racing. Racing stopped the_ milk from being properly loaded; racing stopped it from being properly unloaded; racing prevented it being looked after_ after it had been unloaded : racing is only legalised thieving; and that is how milk is delivered on race morning. For the benefit of whom ? There is a train comes in on race night about 8 o'clock. It comes in darkly—by dead of night—accompanied by a strong escort with weighty boxes and much paraphernalia, altogether a \ery important and pompous affair. It is called thje "gold train." There is-no gold train in the morning. The people themselves are _ the gold train in the morning, filling hundreds of carriages, but one brings it in at night, and takes it straight to the bank. The _ people hug the d&lusion that they bring it in at night, nil they took it out in the morning, but they have only to seo the gold train at night to know that they don't. For the good of whom ? And. echo answers "Whom?" They could have their fill of it for all I care, if they kept it to themselves, but they don't. The dry of racing eats into every industry while the crazy obsession is on.—l am, HENRY BODLEY. January 22, 1915. |