best in appraising the probabilities of the hands dealt to them are likely to be the winners in the end. Provided that the stakes are limited, there is no moral difference between such betting and a transaction announced in the papers after President Harding's death. It was to the advantage of some persons in America to insure against Mr Henry Ford's becoming President of the United States at the next election, and the odds were settled by an English firm of underwriters at 100 to 6. No one entered into that transaction trusting to pure luck, but each party thought the probabilities good enough to justify its completion. Speculative investments (and betting at bridge is always speculative, because of the chances that cannot be eliminated) are very imprudent if one cannot afford to lose; but they are not ethically wrong per se in all cases.

In so far, then, as one bets on luck, or chance, without knowledge or skill or calculation, one is acting immorally for that very reason. Where knowledge and chance are both factors, which is the more difficult case to estimate, each transaction must be judged on its merits, provided always that as little as possible is left to chance. To bet on a horse of which we know only what we read in the newspapers is not far removed from betting on chance.

Nothing has yet been said about the policy of the State in regard to gambling. In this country lotteries are illegal, although they are legal in France or Austria and perhaps in Ireland. I believe that it was not any high ethical considerations that produced our Lottery Acts, but the circumstance that the Government of the day wished to keep lotteries as a State monopoly. However that may be, lotteries are now with us illegal; and if the argument or part of it--put forward in this paper be accepted they are also immoral, because they invite people to invoke chance in the ordering of their lives. It is greatly to be hoped that any form of State lottery or issue of Premium Bonds will be discouraged in the future as well as in the past, and that roulette tables will as heretofore be treated as illegal.

The case of Premium Bonds may be thought to stand in a different category. If an investor of small means

is so fortunate as to draw a prize, the investment habit will probably be encouraged, and he is more likely in the future to invest his savings than to spend them unnecessarily. If he does not draw a prize, no harm is done, and he gets his dividend all the same. Surely, then, it is urged, the issue of Premium Bonds may be beneficial to the State rather than hurtful. But the point I have tried to make is that to invoke chance is always wrong, because it is to dethrone reason; and that it is extremely dangerous for the State to suggest that in the conduct of life the intervention of chance

may legitimately be invoked. If this is right in the purchase of Premium Bonds, it is difficult to see why it should be wrong to purchase tickets for a lottery. These forms of gambling are immoral per se, as I have tried to show, and the State ought not to make money out of them.

Then comes the question as to taxing bets on racing. These cannot be condemned absolutely, unless one is prepared also to condemn speculative investments, in which, while knowledge and experience are helpful to the investor, luck plays the larger part. And how the law is fairly to distinguish between backing one's judgment in matters of sport and backing one's judgment in business is not very easy to say. But the similarity between the two kinds of transaction suggests that there is no ethical reason against the taxing of betting. Every stock certificate has to bear a stamp. This is a tax which is paid by the investor, of which no one complains, no matter how wild or speculative the investment may be. Certainly it does not encourage investment, for it adds, although but slightly, to its cost. Nor would a tax on betting encourage betting. It would come in the end out of the pockets of the backers, for bookmakers would take good care that their profits were not reduced. If it were a heavy tax, it would perceptibly shorten the odds, and so would reduce in a small degree the profits of the successful backer.

Mr Cautley's draft memorandum gives good reason for holding that the registration of bookmakers and their offices would not only add a considerable sum to the national revenue, but would discourage and probably cause the disappearance of the street bookmakers who

at present carry on their illicit business in every centre of industry. 'Street betting must be put an end to.' That is the conclusion which the Chairman of the Select Committee reached, and here he will have the general public with him. The matter has not yet been decided by Parliament, but it is one of grave urgency, upon which I have no space to dwell. The purpose of this article has been to distinguish between betting on chance which is always immoral, in a greater or less degree, and betting on skill or knowledge, whether real or presumed, which cannot be condemned as immoral per se without condemning many business transactions which no one would describe either as unethical or as anti-social.

On this view, State lotteries or lotteries for any purpose, the issue of premium bonds and the like, are indefensible. No matter how excellent a purpose may be furthered by their means, lotteries, whether for hospitals or for church extension, should be sternly suppressed, and the law put in action against them. They are demoralising, and it would be wrong for the State to recognise them by taxing them. But it is just as competent for the State to tax bookmakers as to tax stockbrokers, and the registration fees would be a legitimate source of national revenue. The Anglo-Saxon peoples will bet, despite all legislation, and it would be very unwise to attempt such an enlargement of the area of crime as would be necessary if all betting were illegal. The existing law is full of inconsistencies which ought to be adjusted; and it will be a service to the community if the more reputable forms of betting are 'recognised' by being taxed. Nor will there be anything unethical in the imposition of such a tax, for betting is not always immoral in itself, although highly dangerous and vicious in too many instances.

J. H. BERNARD.

Art. 6. THE DECAY OF EUROPE.

SINCE the Peace of Versailles the face of Europe has undergone a change so radical that one who, like myself, has been absent for a couple of years feels on his return as though he had landed in some new continent or lighted upon a different epoch. Time-hallowed landmarks of history have gone, secular institutions have become obsolete, empires and kingdoms that had weathered the most violent political storms have been carried away by the sweep of ungauged forces, and the maps of ten years ago are become almost as useless as those of the 16th century. This break is further-reaching than most people are able to discern or willing to admit. Its causes, still operative, entail sinister consequences which cannot be staved off or modified without heroic efforts, and these the people interested seem unwilling to put forth. Meanwhile, the nations, like the Byzantines of Constantinople who went on wrangling and jabbering and snarling at each other when the enemy was at their gates, are blithely drifting towards a yawning gulf. We are witnessing the close of Europe's hegemony, and it may well be also of her civilisation.

Nor is it merely the outer symbols of the familiar culture which one misses to-day: the mental workings, the spiritual conformation of the leading peoples have been recast in new moulds and are hardly recognisable. Fresh ideals have been set up, and into the bewildered minds and souls of men strange beliefs and sentiments have been stamped which bewray the maelstrom of fierce passions wherein they took their rise. Individually and collectively the world's foremost races have dropped astern in the fairway of progress. True, their actual achievements had always fallen far short of their professions. Never, at the best of times, have the most refined peoples been able to dispense with two distinct codes of ethics, one for home use and the other for the shaping and maintenance of intercourse with foreign States; the former a distant approach to morality, and the latter a charter of obliquity permitted within certain limits and under a conventional mask of decorum. To-day the political code has been further broadened until it contains hardly any recognised prohibitions,

while the private rule of conduct has been largely assimilated to the political. Formerly, for example, individuals were obliged, exhorted, or permitted to lie, rob, and murder only when the supposed good of the community-religious or political-was at stake. To-day the right to kill depends upon alleged motive, and cheek by jowl with political and social leaders of the old type one is hail-fellow-well-met with conscientious assassins and conceited bomb-throwers. Everywhere, except in Russia, the responsibility of private murderers is being gradually whittled away in the name of science or humanity. In short, never before has human history been spread out on such a vast scale, nor have any two of its divisions been sundered from each other by such a broad abyss as during the decennium 1915-1924.*

Some of the little-heeded differences between the states-system of ten years ago and that of to-day are, to my thinking, fraught with lasting consequences. One of these is the shrinkage of political Europe from a loosely cemented community of 449 millions to a potential entity of 300 millions. This falling off is due chiefly to the secession of Russia on the one hand and the assumed elimination of Great Britain on the other. As yet neither of these phenomena has met with the attention it deserves at the hands of governments or individuals. Moreover, few people realise the fact that previous to the world-war political Europe, which included both these realms from Valentia in Ireland to the Urals in Asia, was at bottom an informal federation whose members were linked together by common interests which were protected in a general way by public sentiment, and sporadically by treaties, leagues, and alliances. The members of this shadowy States-Union voluntarily recognised certain written and unwritten laws and complied with the corresponding obligations which regulated their intercourse among themselves. And, now and

* Cf. the writings of Franciso Nitti since the Peace of Versailles; the 2nd edition of Joseph Caillaux' book, 'Où va la France ? Où va l'Europe?' Paris, 1924; L'Avenir de l'Entente Franco-Anglaise,' par René Pinon, Paris, 1924' 'Pan-Europa,' von R. N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Wien, 1923; 'Europa 1914 und 1924,' von Dr Carl Brockhausen, Wien, 1924; 'The European States-System,' by R. B. Mowat, London, 1923.