HORSE-RACING AND HORSE-BREEDING.
[TO THE EDITOR. or THE " SPECTATOR."]
:.iii,—At the present time when the public has largely lost faith in authorities and precepts, and desires to know the truth of many things, and in view of the protests which are being raised against the suspension of horse-racing by the Government, many of us would like to know the truth about horse-racing in relation to horse-breeding, and horse-brecding in relation to the general interests of the civilized world.
We should like to know whether the type of horse that is evolved from horse-racing—namely, that in which speed is developed at the cost of sturdiness, endurance, strength, and size—is of any use to us nowadays. Everywhere we find the horse as a draught animal being replaced by the steam or petrol engine. The only direction in which this process is stayed is in the matter of ploughing, work on the farms, and road transport; in which cases it is certainly not the race-horse breed, or any great element of the race-horse, that is of any use. Fox-hunting is an exhilarating exercise, but it is not the most practical way of getting rid of the lox, which in its turn levies a very serious toll on our food supplies (poultry, rabbits, lambs). For reasonable riding exercise it is not necessary to bestride a racer, and for exhilaration and the cultivation of daring and courage probably aviation, bicycling, and motoring are acquirements of more practical value.
Cavalry ? Surely. the average cavalry charger is not a race- horse. And cavalry we see daily is passing more and more out of the scope of modern warfare, even in the deserts of Africa and the steppes. of Asia. Therefore, unless these questions can be answered to our satisfaction we see no profit to be derived from the perpetuation of the race-horse.
As a pleasant medium for gambling horse-racing is now much discredited. It is associated with an enormous amount of trickery; it encourages drinking, debauchery, and disorderly behaviour around all its centres; in fact, race-meetings are a curse to the counties of Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Cambridgeshire, and Yorkshire, and have a similarly bad effect on Ireland. I quite sympathize with the human craving for gambling in modern- For those who cannot gamble with assured honesty on the
other side by going to Monte Carlo, I think a well-conducted State Lottery should be instituted.
But the most serious question of all that we have got to face is this. How far is horse manure implicated in the generation and spread of such terrible diseases as tetanus, tuberculosis,, and cancer? In the two former diseases the chain of evidence is virtually complete. Persons who tend and ride horses or who live in close proximity to horse stables, or who use horse manure in their tillage, are seriously threatened. And now there is a growing fear that in the same way the secretions of the horse are asso- ciated with the spread of cancer. It is certainly to be noted that many cases of cancer occur in the neighbourhood of stables and mews or amongst people who have much to do with horses.
These are the questions which ought to be inquired into by a committee of impartial men of science before the Government again gives any encouragement to horse-racing.--I am, Sir, he.,
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