RACING IN WAR TIME

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 147, 11 March 1918, Page 6

RACING IN WAR TIME

Sir, —I read in your Saturday's issue a letter signed "Sport, but a Lover of his Country," hi which the writer would have the public belime that the men at the front think that racing ought to be stopped. Well, Sir, I have just returned from the front, I am not yet discharged, and enclose my name and reiuforcement to establish my bona fides, and I can assure the people of New Zealand that no sucn desire ever entered the heads of the men doing the fighting; in fact, it is quite the reverse. lam not a racing man in any shape or form, but it surprsed me to see the interest that the sporting news occasioned- when ' the papers reached the men. I venture to say that the result of your Wellington Cup is more discussed in the trendies, and takes the minds of the men off their misery mora than all the elections that were ever held in the country. This may scorn deplorable to the good folks at home—perhaps it is— but you must never forget that these men are making it possible for you good people to live on the earth at all, that they are making the greatest sacrifice demanded of a nation's mankind, that they are real men, and a love of sport has largely made them what they are. Surely their opinions should not be lightly set aside as deplorable, etc. You may take it from me, Sir, there is not a "wowser" at the front—ask any man from France if this is not the gospel truth. If yon doubt it ask the .iY.M.O.A. field secretaries, ask any chaplain who has mixed with the men, ?nd ask them if they ever knew liner men. By all means do your war work, but do not sit in sackcloth and ashes labouring under the delusion that the soldiers want you to. There never was a greater mis-statement made. It is miserable enough at the front and _in the hospitals without trying to give the people the blues out here, and it seems to me there is no earthly reason for them to pander to a class who cease to exist'directly they join the Army and find out the component parts of human nature in stern reality. The men are tried out in the trendies all right, and they are anything but morally unhealthy. The religion at the front is deep down and true, and unaffected by will o' the wisps like betting aud a beer or two. I notice a gentleman with the German name stating that the war is being won by the "anti" brigade. If he had any knowledge of what takes places in France he would know that the broad-minded sporting spirit is the only possible spirit there; the would-be purist simply does not exist, and let mo remind him that Fiance is where the war has to be wen, and not .by blather at political meetings—l am, etc., RETURNED SOLDIER. Maich 5.