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ENGLANDS RACING AND THE GREAT WAR. I hear that an inquiry is being set on foot to ascertain the views of owners, breeders and trainers as to the extent to which they would be affected by the absence of further facilities for racing on the flat away from Newmarket and under National Hunt Rules. The idea. I understand, is thereby to find out how such a drastic limitation of racing as that outlined would affect owners, breeders and trainers with stables or stud farms in the provinces, as distinct from Newmarket. Hitherto owners in many cases have done their best to keep going in the hope of improvement in the situation, but if the authorities were to revert to their plan of last year, confining racing during the war to Newmarket. I am afraid that it would result in a large number of the smaller owners turning their horses out of training, or selling them by auction for what they might fetch. I have on numerous occasions pointed out that making Newmarket the only place for horse racing is bound to accentuate the slump in bloodstock values in marked degree. It is not easy for small stables to win races with platers in normal times, with meetings galore at which to "place" their horses, but were racing limited, say, to the eight regular meetings and half a dozen "extra" ones at headquarters, the consequent concentration there or the best horses in the kingdom would not fail to freeze the great majority of the small owners out of the business. As to breeders of race horses, the fall in values that took place last year, when racing was confined to Newmarket, was so great that hundreds of yearlings were sola for considerably less than the sums paid by their breeders in stallion fees to the owners of their sires. It is easy in the circumstances to foreshadow the reply of many a breeder to the question, "to what extent do you anticipate that you will be effected if racing is confined to Newmarket during the war. and there is no racing under National Hunt Rules?" The enquiries among the trainers as to the number of horses they had in training before the war and now should result in valuable information. From a casual glance at the "Racing Handbook" for 1914 and 1910 it becomes apparent that most of the provincial trainers now have considerably fewer horses in their stables. A. Taylor, for example, started in 1914 with forty-five horses, and this year with only twenty-eight, a reduction of nearly thirty-eight per cent. Similarly. R. Moretons string of twenty before the war is now reduced to ten. while N. II. Scotts lot has fallen from thirty-four to thirteen. F. Hartigan. too, has experienced a drop, from fifty-two to thirty-three, and the Hon. A. Hastings string has de-. clincd from twenty-seven to thirteen. From thirty-five in 1914 F. Darlings string has diminished to twenty-five, and that of AV. AVaugh from thirty-seyen to twenty-nine. So it goes on. and if there should be no racing, under N. H. Rules, trainers of jumpers will find their occupation gone altogether for the time being. That there should be lio racing at all under jumping rules is. however, unthinkable. It would mean, ruin and starvation for countless people. The shortage of petrol difficulty can be got over by facilities being granted to a limited number of meetings on the flat and under jumping rules. The position at the present time is altogether different to what it was. early in the war. Proof of this is afforded by the greatly-increased train services all over the .kingdom, moreparticularly to seaside resorts in the south for the convenience of holiday-makers. Racing, although it is the spectacular side of the great horse breeding business, is jtself a business, and one in which many millions of capital ;are involved. As such, racing is entitled to a share of the railway facilities enjoyed by other business concerns and the rest of the community at large. "Vigilant" in London Sportsman.
