RACING AND RACEGOERS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 23, 22 October 1919, Page 8

RACING AND RACEGOERS

lilt. ISITT IN REPLY. Sir,—l am glad tlml; you have published "Antisthenes's" contribution to tha Weekly Press" on my comments upon racing, because it gives nie the opportunity of putting my real views upon modern racing before your readers. I was speaking amid a hail of interjection and combating n claim Mint the country race-meeting is a farmers' picnic, and retorted "Fanners' picnic! Hundreds of the racing fraternity stream to these meetings. The modern racecourse is a. nest of blackguardism." Now, nothing was farther from my thoughts than the idea that moil and women who attend race meetings are blackguards. Scores of my intimate friends attend .race meetings, and, admitting some clumsiness of expression, I do not think that either

".- 1 ntisthenes" or any otln>r sano man believes that I am fool or phariseo enough to have meant anything of the kind. Now let us see what room "Antislh"i<es" has to correct any man for carelessness of expression. He deliberately states that Mr. l'sitt "never could 6ea that youth must have the excitement of contest in games, and when they are older the excitement of contest in sports." 1 am a Gradgrind who will not see that people must be amused. This of a man who has boxed, fenced, ran, rid-, den, and rowed, played football, cricketi tennis, golf, billiards, clips?, and cards, and whose temptation through life has been to give too much time to sport, not too little.

My rcplv is that there are few men who love honest, clean sport more than Ido, but that racing has developed into a huge gambling machine that acts as a nucleus for all the ne'er-do-wells in the Dominion who are too lazy to live by their labour, but willing to live bv their wits at the expense of' their foolish neighbours. That it is not a sport that is the occasion—as all snorts are—of some betting. That it is first e.nd foremost a gambling machine, existing on gambling and for gambling to such an extent that destroy the gambling and you destroy the sp«rt.. That while thousands of men and women who attend race meetings do little or 110 betting, nearly six million pounds was put through the totalisator last v»ar, and;in addition a huge sum passed through tihe hands of the bookmakers. The evil is steadily growing, the gambling passion is being instilled more and more into the. peoplei with t''p remit Mint deW, inefficiency, moral degradation and misery abound as the direct results of this "sport." while trickery a"d everv sort of swindle is associated with it. I have long been a "wow=e''" because I snv of a sport of this kind that tih.e game i's not worth the candle, and now T am a Gradgrind. Can "Antisthenps" deny any of these statements? Tie has the temerity to ouote Mr. C. T.ewis as one his ehnnwions. I make 'liim a challenge. Will he %en the columns nf the "Weekly Press" or the "Peferee" to thp full expression of Mr. C. Lewis's views on modern racing? I have talked"tn Mr. lewis on the.'subject.' and if "Antisthenes" will I fancy tlie mcing fraternity will receive a sih.ock. Then we have tho old humbugging wheeze about racing a necessity because it improves the roadster and cavalry horse. Sir. if tho Government will give tbe farmers' associations ■£50,(0) a year for t''o purel'a'6 of imported sires and dams they will do more for tihe improvement of roadsters nnd cavalry mounts in five yenrs than the millions snent on racing will do in fifly, and with no accomnn.nying degradation of men and women. Fiiall\\ I do not look for the stoppage of all .Tacit l ? or hope for the elimination of all gambling, lint I snv that'all decent men nnd women who love the laj>d and the welfare of its reonle should combine to lessen an evil that threatens us with serious ill.—l am, etc.. LEONARD M. ISITT. October 21.