FOOTBALL POOL PROBLEMS
Sta,—Personally I am a gambler. I gamble occasionally on horses, more frequently on dogs, and I would play chemin-de-fer and roulette if Mr. Dalton would allow me sufficient money to take myself off somewhere where I could indulge my vice without it also being a crime. A sympathetic response—almost un cri du coeur—went out from me to meet Mr. Barclay's parenthetical protest that gambling is really hard work. And howl.All those systems, those numerological formulae, that fund of erudition on the vagaries of form! The censorious who refer to us gamblers as "frittering away their money" must learn that we lose by the sweat of our brows. Therefore I express no opinion on the ethics of gambling. Nevertheless I feel Mr. Barclay's case for the football pools is a weak one, which is not strengthened by a certain element of humbug: pool promoters as crusaders for wider opportunities for the common people, and that " interest in breeding and contests of physical endurance combined with a readiness to back up an opinion with cash," as if the average pool punter, any more than the average poker player, were actuated by motives of traditional snortsmanship. It is these commercial attempts to identify all forms of gambling with sportsmanship which have besmirched the very name of sportsman. The only issue of importance for me is the one of national priorities. Have the gambling industries jumped the queue? I think they have, and, in spite of Mr. Barclay's explanations, I should have thought it indisputable that resources are being diverted to the gambling industries which, at a time of dire need,. could be better employed in the nation's interest. If there are so many men and girls who are anxious to improve their material conditions by working overtime, there are also activities for them which would contribute more directly to our recovery than sorting pool coupons ; and if it is trade union restrictive practice that is keeping them away from productive work and driving them into the arms of the pool promoters, so much the worse for trade union policy and practice. Frankly, I should be surprised if any substantial proportion of the people employed in the pool business were found to be so deficient mentally or physically that they. would be useless in any other activity ; and to whatever small extent this peculiar defence may be founded on fact the unfortunate employees would be better occupied receiving some form of psychological, educational or medical help than by drifting hopelessly into the pool promoters' corner of social and psychological curiosities.
Mr. Barclay has entered the arena as champion of the working man's recreation. Let me say that, in the present state of the country, I should feel I had no cause for complaint if every opportunity to gamble were to be denied to me. Equally I believe that the working man would receive the restriction or abolition of pools with the same equanimity as he received the restriction of American films. The squealers, of course, are among those who make large and (unlike their patrons) certain profits out of the pleasures and frailties of myself and my fellow addicts.—Yours
85 New Cavendish Street, W. r.
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