THE TYRANNY OF BRIDGE.
IT is not exactly true to say that it is astonishing that com- munities should allow themselves to be tyrannised by fashion; to find themselves, that is, being led further along a road on which they have entered than they originally meant to go, and being irritated at having gone so far. It is not astonishing because it has happened often in the past, it is happening now, and it will happen again. Human nature being what it is, the history of humanity, like all other histories, will repeat itself. It is, therefore, without feelings of complete dismay—though it may be with a strong feeling of contempt—that thinking men contemplate the latest craze which has dominated what is known as "society,"—namely, the playing of the game of bridge. The craze will pass. Mole ruet sue; its own weight will drag it down. It will become a nuisance, as all fashions do just before they become unfashionable. Men and women will discover that what was at first a pleasure has become a pain, and when that discovery has been made, the game will be played or not be played according to the amount of pleasure it is still found to give. It will find its own level among the thousands of forms of taking pleasure open to money and leisure; and the pleasure-loving crowd will seek some fresh method of utilising—so far as that word has any meaning for them—the time at their disposal.
There is probably a good deal of exaggeration in the many current reports as to the evils which the craze for gambling at bridge has introduced. But there is fire somewhere under the smoke. When it is said that women, and even young , girls, night after night lose far more money than they can possibly manage to pay ; when it is known that certain extremely skilful players contrive to pocket very large sums of money,—in fact, make a handsome income out of the game; when it is at least hinted that So-and-so's play is not above suspicion, and when it is observed that A playing with B as his partner somehow or other hardly ever loses a rubber; and when, finally, it gets to be known that C can be left unpaid—which is the most -perilous knowledge of all—then there is very little mistake as to what is happening. For if some one always wins, some one must always lose; and when a born gambler loses often there is not much that he will not ' do to try to recoup himself for his losses. And there lies the special danger of this game. For although it is to the beginner seemingly a game of chance—a game, that is, in which a newcomer "with any luck" might hope to be successful—it is in reality nothing of the kind. It is a game of chance to this extent, that good cards, unless played insanely, must beat bad cards, and that there is at least a chance that an unskilled player may be dealt a superlatively good hand. But it must be remembered that superlatively good hands are rare; also that a skilful player has just as good a chance of getting a good hand as an unskilful player, and that when he gets his good hand he will make more of it than the unskilful player. But the majority of hands dealt in an evening—perhaps it would be equally correct to substitute the word "morning "—are moderate ; neither very good nor very bad. And it is when hands con- tinue to be moderate that the newcomer realises the hard fact that the game is a game of skill. It is a game which can only be played with a sound chance of success by those who have played it many hundreds of times, who have had all sorts and conditions of hands dealt them, and who have made careful deductions from a wide experience as to the general rules which should guide them in this or that situation, and as to the precise way in which this or that hand should be played. No better evidence of the fact that bridge is a game of skill could be brought than this, that the "Cavendish" of bridge has not yet been written. We mean no disrespect to the authors of the thoughtful and illuminating volumes which have been written on the game during the last two or three years; perhaps, in- deed, we ought to say that it is not generally agreed that the " Cavendish " of bridge has been written. New theories, new develcipments, new combinations of chances, are still being spied by mathematical minds, and it is hardly likely that, good though what has been written may be, there will be written nothing better. That leads to other questions. How is it, if it is the fact that bridge is first and foremost a game of skill, that it has taken so strong a hold on sections of the community not conspicuous for intellect; and how is it, when once it has been recognised that skill, not chance, wins the game, that experienced men can still sit down to play for money with women and girls whom they know to be almost as ignorant of the rules governing a " declaration " as they are of bimetallism or the differential calculus? The answer to the first question is, no doubt, that nobody likes to own himself considerably more stupid than his neighbour, and that it is not perhaps yet thoroughly realised that in bridge it is the intellect kindred to that of the chess-player which wins. (How many girls would sit down to play chess for stakes?) To the second question there is only one answer: that some men will do practically anything for money. The man who sits down to play at high points, believing, or at least hoping, that he will rise from the table with his opponent —who may be an unmarried girl—heavily in debt to him, must have put a certain question to himself and have answered it. "If Lady A or Miss B chooses to play in this company, that is her look-out and not mine. It is not my place to warn her, and I should be a fool to refuse to play against her." Possibly; but it is fortunately not every man who would be happy at finding himself to have arrived at that conclusion.
Would it be desirable, and if so would it be possible, by any means to stop or to prevent the evils attendant on this kind of gambling ? It might be desirable, but it is much harder to see how it is possible. For the truth is that when you are dealing with a large community of free persons, there is one thing which you can do, and that is to say that this or that shall not take place; and there is another thing which you can- not do, and that is to make certain that it shall not take place. Like Mr. Barrie's "Sentimental Tommy," people will always "find a w'y " to do what they want to do. That cardinal fact is recognised by our Legislative Assemblies; it must be recognised by the majority in all assemblies of sensible men. Take the case, for instance, of the campaign which has been carried on_for years against betting. Betting on horse-racing, everybody admits, has been productive of an enormous amount of evil and suffering. Rich men have lost their fortunes; poor men have ruined themselves and their families; betting has led to theft, forgery, suicide, and murder. That is true; but you cannot prevent men from betting. You can limit the temptations to bet and the opportunities for betting : you can make it a penal offence to bet openly in the streets, for instance, and you can exact heavy fines from persons con- victed of keeping gaming-houses; there you have bargains of a kind made in public, and you can prevent those bargains from being made. But what you cannot prevent is the private bargain. You cannot prevent one man from saying to another, "I bet you a shilling that I am right," nor can you prevent the man who proves the bettor wrong from receiving his shilling; and if you cannot prevent men from betting in shillings you cannot prevent them from betting in sovereigns. There will always be, so to speak, too many men for the police The fact is that no free oommunity ever permits itself to suffer for long under a condition of things which the general sense of the community determines to be inconvenient or in- tolerable. When the general sense of the community decides that there is something wrong, what is wrong gets altered somehow. Not at once, perhaps. It may happen that the minority has to work hard and for long to persuade the majority to see what are the community's best interests; but the wrong gets righted in time,—the general tendency away from the extremes to the mean fulfils itself. So it is with the latest instance of a temporary rush to the extreme in the case of the craze for the game of bridge. The extreme sooner or later will be found to be a nuisance, and there will be a return to the mean. The pendulum may swing far, but it does not stop swinging. That is, we shall soon hear no more of girls in tears over their gambling debts, and ready to appeal to mere strangers on any pretext for financial help; but at the same time sensible men who like a game of bridge for moderate stakes will continue to play the game, and will play it with a perfectly clear conscience. They will be doing neither them- selves nor anybody else any harm, and will be engaging in a thoroughly legitimate pastime. There are worse ways of spending one's time than indulging in a game of cards with reasonable stakes at reasonable hours. The offence of gaming is a question of degree. Gambling is a social offence, but playing a game for money only becomes gambling when it is carried to excess. What is excess here it is sometimes difficult to determine, but no more difficult than to decide what is excess in drinking, eating, or the pursuit of some useless and expensive hobby.
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