The Chronicle PUBLISHED DAILY. LEVIN. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1915. HORSERACING; THE WAR; CROM WELL; CHARLES 11.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 9 October 1915, Page 2

The Chronicle PUBLISHED DAILY. LEVIN. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1915. HORSERACING; THE WAR; CROM WELL; CHARLES 11.

A VVdlington journalist long departed (.Ihoinas Du'an the Elder) wrote an article in deprecation of melancholy ii herein lie referred humorously to the Pilgrim Fathers' predilection for lugabrioutmess. He alleged that Sunday's discipline ion tlie Mayllmver was ;o strict that no one was allowod to sneeze on the upper deck; it was essential u> retire to the mam hold, and there sneeze into a bag provided for sneezers' accoinni xlatun! Something of this spirit prevails even 1 o-day. It was displayed at Sydney hist Thursday, when "the Presbyterian Church. Committee" passed a resolution of protest

"against tlio King's re present a tive<» encouraging racing by tilioir attendance at what is ;vt nil times a monare to tlic morality of the community and especially dangerous in war time. Wo cannot find terms sufficiently l strong to indicate our abhorrence at national hypocrisy which on the ono liniul pleads for recruits and economy, and 011 the other encourages an. institution conspicuous for its deleterious influence and extraordinary 'waste of money through gambling." One might ask what right any body of divines has to concern itself with matters of individual judgment; but quite apart from that aspect. The Chronicle sees Tn the Sydney committee's ranlifiudiug au indication of "nerviness" born in tho strain of war Auditions. It is an incontrovertible fact that some men must stay at homo to till tho soil and run the businesses lor the militant once at the front. And the younger of those at home now may he with i. e troops on active service next, year. That being tlx© case, why is tho Governor oi Australia (or is it New iSout.li Wales?) reprehended lor attending a race meeting as part oi ius official duty (for that is what Ilia visit amounts to, altogether apart irom liis private nclinations)? If people are doing their real duty in Australia and Now Zealand, there is no proper reason for objecting to their participation in a race meeting. And if some of them gamble beyond their means they pay the principal part of the penalty themselves; just as the drunkards do, in common with the gluttons and raise. - • The man who spends other people's nionoy at a race-meeting is numerically a rarity ; and probably iie would spend it in some other way if race meetings were abandoned. A broader outlook and a more reasonable judgment is Australia's present need, and we arc suffering from an abasement of tike public in general before the captious unleadevlike ssuilements of people set in comparatively high places for which they "may" have been fitted in normal times, and for which they are obviously unfitted m times like the present. The war calls foi sustained courage and renewed 011dearoum, hut our people will fight it none the better if they become an .g----gregation of lugubrious moQoruania'.'s.,

screwing and contriving to do without their ordinary pleasures and relaxations.. The sure fruit ot such abstinence, would ho to raise in Australasia a irace of Cronrwcllian ironsides that as surely would he followed (in natural reversion of type) by a recrudescence of tho cavalier ways and manners of the days of Charles the Second. Evidently the Presbyterian Church Committee of Sydney, like some more prominent bodies, lacks the presence of son e stalwart who Mould toll 'unpalatable truths to those members whose judgments tend to run in ready-made and ready-phrased channels.