MUNICIPAL BILLIARDS.
[To 'Ms EDITOM OP TIM ..SPACTATOV. J Sin,—In view of the reports which have appeared recently in the newspapers with regard to the provision of billiard-tables in Battersea out of the rates, I thought it would be interesting to know how far this particular flight of Socialism had gone. I therefore made inquiries, and have ascertained the following facts. The first billiard-table was purchased out of the rates five years ago, and deposited at the public baths. Finding it popular, the Borough Council bought a second table the following year, and this also was placed at the public baths. Since then a billiard-table has been established at the Battersea Town Hall, which, however, 1 am informed was purchased by the employes there. At the opening of a public museum and reading-room about four months ago another billiard-table was provided in the reading-room out of the ratepayers money. Possibly the fact that this Socialistic innovation did not become widely known till quite lately is due to the entire absence of any external notification either at the public baths or at the museum that billiards are provided within. When I called early one afternoon at the newly opened reading-room, I found it full of young men playing billiards, bagatelle, dominoes, shove-halfpenny, &c., the entire material for all which games had been paid for out of the rates. But, Sir, this is not all. Those who think that the Progressives have learnt a lesson from their disasters at the recent Borough Council elections will be interested to learn that one of the first acts of the Library Committee of the new Borough Council has been to recommend the purchase of yet another billiard-table, and I presume that this will in due course he done. An energetic protest at a public meeting convened by the British Constitutional Association seems to have had little permanent effect. Clearly as long as ratepayers continue to be utterly apathetic with regard to local affairs, so long will their money continue to be squandered in ways wholly indefensible and wrong.—I am, Sir, &c., Sande Club, 107 Piccadilly, W. . Haan S. R. ELLIOT.
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