LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
ASCOT IN WAR TIME.
[To Toe EDITOR OP TIM ...SPECTATOR.") SIR,—There has been much discussion recently over the question of the Epsom Grand Stand. As to the rights and
wrongs involved in that discussion I hardly think there can be two opinions. Bat, Sir, I ask your permission to address yon on a larger issue. It is proposed, we are told, to hold the Ascot races this year as usual. The proposal seems to many people simply outrageous, and we who think thus would deeply appreciate and welcome a candid opinion on the sub- ject from the Spectator, and as a regular reader I ask you most earnestly to give your views on this grave proposal.
To me it seems simply incredible, and even cruel, that there should be any idea of holding the Ascot race meeting this year. Doubtless if the meeting were cancelled losses would be inflicted. But, Sir, is there any one so mean-spirited as to fear pecuniary loss if thereby a greater good can be procured? And how can our Government effectively appeal to strikers on the Clyde or to unwilling workers, on the grounds of the national emergency, the national determination, the nation's crisis, if at the same time those strikers see the leisured classes getting ready to enjoy Ascot week ? Again, I say, it seems unthinkable that our race-going public should contemplate the luxurious pleasures end excitements of that week when the balk of our manhood is struggling to win honour for us in the trenches in Flanders ; when there is scarcely a home that has not had to -bear its .cruel but glorious loss.; when we are all striving, one way or another, to uplift each other to a full comprehension of the sanctity of our cause and the glory of self-sacrifice. Sir, will you not give your powerful support to genre attempt to prevent this heartless merry-making in the midst of national trial ? Doubtless it is true that in the highest quarters sanction has been given to horse-racing at this time, but surely, surely not to Ascot week. And there is a big distinction. To keep up horse-racing in order to prevent undue distress is a very different thing from counte- nancing the careless and pleasure-giving attractions of the festive Ascot season. What appeal can we make on the ground of self-denial, self-discipline, to our younger generation when such glaring selfishness is offered to their gaze? Will France or Russia understand that England is putting forth her greatest energies in the common cause when they read or hear of our fashionable race meeting? And will there not seem to be some truth in the German accusation that we are a morally decadent people? If as a nation we can either be so callous to human grief, or so devoted to selfish pleasures, that we cannot for once in a way forgo the superficial delights of an Ascot week, with its fashionable society and its spend- thrift attraction, then, Sir, it is time we 'learnt a very bitter
[This seems to us just-one of those cases in which instinct is the best guide, and the instinct of those who want to make the nation realize that the war is a life-and-death struggle and not a pageant is, we are sure, -dead against such public displays as Ascot week. Race meetingaes a whole,like football snatches, seem to ns .utterly inappropriate just now, but about gatherings like Ascot week there can, we should have thought, be only one opinion. "Business as usual" may possibly be a good motto, though even of that we are not quite sure. "Pleasure as usual" is certainly a vile one—ED. Spectator.]
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