THE CLERGY AND GAMBLING

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 100, 19 July 1927, Page 8

THE CLERGY AND GAMBLING

THERE was last night a further clerical outburst against the Gaming Amendment Bill. The Rev. J. J. North, who expressed the pious hope that the gods would destroy the supporters of the Bill, gives as one reason for his dislike of racing that a racehorse eats twice as much as does a cow. The Rev. Lionel B. Fletcher, who confesses that before he became a clergj--man he gambled in some of the greatest “schools” in Australia, says he hates gambling “like two devils.” In this diatribe against gambling there was much intemperate talk. Bookmakers were even accused of going around the backdoors of workers’ homes, inducing workers’ wives to make bets. Such ridiculous assertions tend to mar whatever good case the clergy has against the Bill. With the ethics of gambling the newspapers are not mainly concerned, though most of them will admit there is altogether too much gambling in the community. But the newspapers will maintain that they should have the right to publish totalisator dividends with their reports of race meetings, and they will not retract from this attitude so long as the Government continues to publish dividends through the telegraph.