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. i ENGLISH VIEW OF RACING TIPS. If a sporting journalist wrote with the confidence of ignorance on theology, the feeding of infants or the spread of Mormonism, he would be laughed at, says the London Sportsman. It is a consideration that gives no pause to the people who take pot shots at racing as tlie evil of evils. A. Mr. Hogge lias been spreading himself on a subject he knows nothing about. The so-called sporting press exists for the main purpose of promoting gambling in con nection with sport," he says. A more impudent falsehood is not often ventured on. A glance at any issue, or any number of issues, would serve to refute it. Then this gentleman goes on to complain of the Inaccuracy of racing predictions. Acting as his own bookmaker he found that had he ventured a shilling on each of a series of tips he would have been some to the bad. We have not chocked his calculations, nor are we concerned to. If he supposes that any writer on a reputable paper under takes to say what horse or horses will win a race or series of races he is mistaken. What they attempt to do is to estimate direct and collateral form. give weight to any liking or fitness an anmial may have shown for a particular course, have regard to the probable state of the going, aud half a dozen other things that may affect the result. His own deductions from these premises, when he proceeds that step further, the writer makes quite diffidently in nineteen cases out of twenty. Even in the twentieth he docs not say what will win. but what sliould win, if the form works out right, accidents barred. Now form has a knack of varying and accidents of happening. A week or a month, a season even, may not settle rival claims. If form could be depended on as a sum in arithmetic may he, we should have no betting. There can be nothing more certain than that. The backers would not find a layer. A student of form may be able to determine what ought to win; what will lies day by day in the lap of the gods. Is a writer to be blamed for a fact which he recognizes quite as readily as his critics and with far more knowledge than they can pretend to? As well abuse a physician for an imperfect diagnosis. Certain factors of the disease are patent, •Chen hidden. If the result is not all that he anticipated nor exactly what he foretold, nobody derides him. So with a man who writes to save readers the trouble of looking up much information, which he sifts and winnows for them so that under their eyes they may have the facts co-ordinated and properly marshaled. What they are in possession of is not advice to be followed blindly, but the orderly-material for forming a judgment that must be in tluenced by circumstances of which the writer could not take account, the immediate weather, the state of the ground, and the apparent fitness or otherwise of the horses themselves. Many a man in the paddock has renounced the opinion he put down oil paper some fifteen or sixteen hours earlier in a newspaper office. It is for those who at the cost of a penny have had the laborious work done for them so to supplement, according to their judgment. Practically only racing calls for the publication of betting returns, and that nearly always after the event. In connection with football, cricket, hockey, lacrosse, rowing, cross-country, bowls, walking, billiards, wrestling, boxing, tennis, lawn tennis, hunting, shooting, yachting, coursing, motoring, coaching, golf, swimming, and angling no mention of betting is made, though our columns are crowded with the reports of these sports and games, yet. forsooth, "the so-called sporting press exists for the main -purpose of promoting gambling in connection with sport." What malicious rubbish. It is certain that if betting paid, everybody in want of money would bet. What is the parson doing who puts his savings into a trade enterprise that promises him ten or twenty per cent? He knows well he is taking a risk, and if he Insures his life, as he should, he is accepting the odds, year after year, that he does not die before the end of each succeeding one in which he slakes his money, that is. pays his premium. Mr. Hogge should rejoice, not despair, if the backer of horses cannot win always, nor often. That should wean him. bad man. Somehow it does not. He would rather lose than not have a bet at all. One man spends his money one way, another another. A pit seat in the theater may give no more pleasure than to have the price of it on ones fancy in a race, nor so much. You can as reasonably deny a man the former enjoyment as the latter. In any case it is impossible to put down betting. If horse racing were stopped tomorrow there would be just as much money risked, but on something else. The inclination must be atrophied if the indulgence is to be killed, and that end, desirable or not. is unattainable by mortal man. The instinct is too deeply rooted in human nature; not in every man. hut iu some men; and they will have their way.
