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REAL REASON FOR HORSE RACING. "Its hard to write these days. Its so muddy yen slip and slop all over the horse lines until your le-s are weary, and the old black marc is just after making a pass at her driver because he fed her mate before her. Old Topsy. veteran of Vpres. St. Kloi. the Somme and half a dozen others. Shes a thoroughbred, too. with every muscle, every line per feet, with just a slight arch in the neck. She takes no notice when you pet her. You cant fondle her. but shes true. She knows by instinct to hurry away from the guns and the studied areas. She might fall into a shell hole, but shell never stay there. Cod bless all thoroughbred horses and curse all others:" — Letter from driver W. A. Murton, C. F. A., in Toronto Telegram. And here driver Murton has told in the fewest words. the real reason for horse racing throughout the world. None of those who do not go to races know it; and of those who do go but few realize or reflect on it. But these shortcomings in no way affect the everlasting principle, that it is the spirit that matters. Lacking the spirit of the thoroughbred, an animal, a man. or a whole people become degenerate. They may prosper in material things, but it is possible for a comniuiKTy to be poor in the things that are greater than material riches. The mean of spirit submit to oppression, and suffer easily the loss of the most valuable possessions. Test of the Race Course. The courage, the endurance, the heart that admit no defeat are developed and determined iu the horse by one. and only one, method — the test of the race course. In the time of mortal stress the coldblooded and the coward, man or beast, fails, but the thoroughbred ever struggles on. For the possession of that saving blood the buyers of the Bnssian. French and German governments laid down fortunes in the purchases of winners of Englands great races in the days before the war. and will do so in days to come. Continental governments long ago, read the lesson of history which Prof. Rawlinson puts into those words : "Since the days of the Assyrians the predominance among tiie nations of the earth has been coincident, with and, in large measure, dependent upon the possession of the best horses." And the blessing of driver Murton of the Canadian Field Artillery on the horse of thoroughbred ancestry, fighting such fights as the world never saw before, is the voice of one who knows. — Toronto Globe.
