There is hardly any “gambling” in English golf. Private matches sometimes provoke a heavy wager between the players, but that is not gambling. In Scotland, however, where most towns have links which are open to everybody for a fee of threepence, there is an immense amount of gambling among the poorer classes. Now it is certainly far better that the Scotch mechanic should spend his Saturday afternoon playing at a fine game than in watching other people play it, as his English brother does at a football match. But it is an enormous pity that such facilities as the poorer folk enjoy for sport should be abused and spoilt. A well-known Scotch clergyman, a favourite preacher of the late Queen’s, tells me that the gambling at golf makes a constant watchfulness necessary on the part of players. “Many of them will cheat if they can,” he said; “and you’ll know how easy it is to cheat at golf? It’s just the money aspect of the question. It’s small wonder that a man will move his ball an inch from under a bunker, if it’s necessary and the other fellow isn’t looking, when perhaps a third of his week’s wages depends upon the lie.”
Again I would punctuate my instance with the moral it affords. Here also sport suffers. If I did not believe in the inherent nobility of sport, if I was not absolutely convinced of its supremely important place in the life of both soul and body, I should not be writing this. But as one goes on with this dismal catalogue—no very pleasant task, one gets into a fever of indignation. “Duo quum patiuntur idem, non est idem,” of course. No two men experience identical effects from identical causes. But true sportsmen will at least share something of my feeling. And it’s no use to set out alone to kick the world’s shins. The world has several million shins to your one. We must combine—we who love sport and realize what it means.
The Hermes of Praxiteles is a perfect type of all that is physically fit and fine—and so spiritually also—in man.
Take that statue and regard it for a moment as a concrete manifestation of all that is meant by the word “sport.”
And then, suppose that the Hermes of Praxiteles were your own possession, that you had it in your own house. Would you allow a crew of people who cared nothing for great art to cover it with mud?
......Now to gambling as it affects the major sports.
Cricket is fortunately untouched, save very occasionally in League cricket. It is pleasant to think of our national game as unsmirched.
But football, which we may well call our other national game, is most deeply and gravely involved.
Of the two games, rugby is cleanest in this regard. In the Northern Union District there is more gambling than elsewhere, but, take it all in all, rugby does not greatly suffer.