A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE hoary old proposal for a State Lottery to bring funds into the Treasury is being fitfully pushed again. Since one of its sponsors is Field-Marshal Lord Birdwood, it cannot be dismissed out of hand. But it certainly will not be adopted while Sir Stafford Cripps is Chancellor of the Exchequer, nor, I hope, by any of his successors. The case against a State Lottery is clear. It is the same case as against football pools and gambling in general. It is an essential mark of the good citizen that he should cultivate a sense of responsi- bility in the use of money, measuring his expenditure against his income, and saving what he reasonably can as a provision against old age and against various emergencies. That calls for sober calcu- lation and not the meretricious excitements of chance. Room for expenditure on sensible recreation of course there is in any family budget. But if a lottery gives, say, one chance in ten thousand of winning a substantial prize, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety- nine persons will lose the price of their tickets altogether. That, I submit, is not the way for responsible persons to treat money. Any who can spare it so easily might consider whether patriotic duty should not lead him to send it to Sir Stafford even without the superfluous stimulus of a lottery.
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