For in a State lottery—with daily prizes
of L50,000—the game (or gambling) element
does not exist. Buy your L100 bond, as a thousand
placards will urge you to do, and you simply take part
in a cold-blooded attempt to acquire money without
working for it. You can take no personal interest
whatever in the manner of acquiring it. Somebody
turns a handle, and perhaps your number comes out.
More probably it doesn’t. If it doesn’t,
you can call yourself a fool for having thrown away
your savings; if it does—well, you have
got the money. May you be happy with it!
But you have considerably less on which to congratulate
yourself than had the street-corner boy who backed
Bronchitis. He had an eye for a horse. Probably
you hadn’t even an eye for a row of figures.
Moreover, the State would be giving its official approval
to the unearned fortune. In these days, when
the worker is asking for a week of so many less hours
and so many more shillings, the State would answer:
“I can show you a better way than that.
What do you say to no work at all, and L20 a week
for it?” At a time when the one cry is “Production!”
the State adds (behind its hand), “Buy a Premium
Bond, and let the other man produce for you.”
After all these years in which we have been slowly
progressing towards the idea of a more equitable distribution
of wealth, the Government would show us the really
equitable way; it would collect the savings of the
many, and re-distribute them among the few. Instead
of a million ten-pound citizens, we should have a
thousand ten-thousand-pounders and 999,000 with nothing.
That would be the official way of making the country
happy and contented. But, in fact, our social
and political controversies are not kept alive by
such arguments as these, nor by the answers which
can legitimately be made to such arguments. The
case of the average man in favour of State lotteries
is, quite simply, that he does not like Dr. Clifford.
The case of the average man against State lotteries
is equally simple; he cannot bear to be on the same
side as Mr. Bottomley.
The Record Lie
I have just seen it quoted again. Yes, it appears
solemnly in print, even now, at the end of the greatest
war in history. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
And the writer goes on to say that the League of Nations
is all very well, but unfortunately we are “not
angels.” Dear, dear!
Being separated for the moment from my book of quotations,
I cannot say who was the Roman thinker who first gave
this brilliant paradox to the world, but I imagine
him a fat, easy-going gentleman, who occasionally
threw off good things after dinner. He never thought
very much of Si vis pacem, para bellum; it
was not one of his best; but it seemed to please some
of his political friends, one of whom asked if he
might use it in his next speech in the Senate.
Our fat gentleman said: “Certainly, if
you like,” and added, with unusual frankness:
