CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 March 1917, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

LEGITIMATE PLEASLT. To the Editor. ■?b', —In your issue of Friday we have a great deal made out. or attempted to be made out, of legitimate pleasures and a pernicious licensing system that h assumed to interfere with those legitimate pleasures. It all seems to turn on what is to be understood by the word "legitimate." There is a German interpretation of the word and a British interpretation; so there is the gambler's use in defence of his vice, and there is the economist's use wherein ho shows the gambler's delusion; there is,"too, the drinker's idea of what is legitimate drink and the hygienist's scientific conclusions thereon. In each case the view taken by the German, the gambler, and the drinker is that expressed by Bernstorfl': "A man is a fooi who denies himself any gooj tiling in this life"—see Daily News oT"\M.onday lasr. It just comes to this; No law but my own pleasure and my o\\i might. If there is to be 110 higher law than selfishness and might there is small hope for the world and for civilization and for humanity. But. there is; we have passed tho animal stage in the world's progress, though there is a tendency to hark back on to the old bad times; and we are to be ruled by a higher law that shall make our duty to society, national or international, take precedence of our sellsh individualism. The gambler wants to have protection of law under the plea that horse-racing is a legitimate pleasure;' it may be to see houses racing, but not, to use that as a means of getting money without giving an equivalent for it. .Many persons went to the agricultural show yesterday and had great pleasure in seeing the parade .of prize animals, the high-spirited horses, the graceful riders, and the leaping, without any desire to gamble over it. These gamblers call themselves sports, but they are not; they will not even play a game at cards without the money stake, plainly showing that it is the stake they are after and not the simple sport. The same applies to racing and other events where the betting is so general. To put it shortly, betting is not legitimate according to the higher law of duty to our neighbor; and it i= a (fisgrace to our civilization that the Government of this country legalises betting by licensing the totalisator. The other "legitimate" pleasure that is contrary to the higher law is that of using intoxicating drinks. Here New Zealand's laws are still more inconsistent. It is provided that a person may not poison himself with opium, but may do so with alcohol; lie may not enjoy the pleasure of the opium smoker's dream, but lie may revel in the fool's paradise of the tippler who is 011 the way to drunkenness. Sir James Allen deplores overindulgence in drink, and admits that more might have been done to movent, it; but now nothing more can be done, in the absence of Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward. Well, why did he not add in the presence of Mr. Myers, Mr. Vigor Brown, and others interested in the liquor trade who are in Cabinet and Parliament. Your space will not allow any comment 011 the ''pernicious licensing system," but here I am at last quite in accord with the lawyers, and agree that sly-grog-selling is the outcome of the pernicious system. Yet men can nob. or will not, see a remedy; they are like owls in daylight—the light is too mvK'ii for them.—l am, etc., GEO. H. MAUNDER.