December 30.
Tas last issue of Municipal Minutes published on Saturday contains reference to Public Gambling which calls for closer attention than may have been accorded to it amid the exigencies of the holiday season. Asis known, the crusade carried on by the Municipal Council against public gambling dates back some six years and has had the effect of proscribing the evil in its worst forms with the limits of the Settlement. Beyond the borders, however, gambling has continued to be indulged in quite freely, battening on the immunity it enjoys from the reach of the Council's arm. The only method of coping with it in its outside refuges was through the medium of the Consuls by whose nationals it was conducted. For a considerable time the support of the Spanish Consul in the matter was withheld, but under a new regime the necessary authority to act was given to the Municipal Police and it appeared that gambling at the tore notorious places had been satisfactorily scotched. The munyheaded hydra, however, had not lost its vitality with the amputation of one or two heads, for it soon re-appeared elsewhere under the With the losing of the two big iso of a different nationality.
resorts, a third has increased its clientele, and no sooner have measures been directed against. the latter than one of the former springs again into activity under new management. In—dealing with the subject of gambling it is unnecessary to attempt to gauge the relative position it holds in the scale of public vices; nor is it necessary to condone all forms of it, because the generality of mankind indulges in it in one form or another. It is universally admitted that the gaming-table introduces has subtle distinctions that renders it essentially more vicious than the majority of types of gambling, in so far as its surroundings conduce more than those of any other form to loss of self-control that leads to tunpremeditated excesses. Be that.
it may, it is incumbent on the administrators of community to which an annual influx of more or less unsophisticated youth wends its way to restrict as far as possible the inducements to public gambling.
It is in this spirit, we may presume, that the Municipal Coun-oil -has undertaken its crusade, which at one tithe seemed to be: fortunate in the support of the Consular Body. Having secured the assistance of the Spanish Consul, the Council found that public gambling was at last confined to one resort conducted by a campaign its actions Feplay the Cuban; but from this point of the
uncertainty and irresolution that might have been ex; if the Councillors had suddenly been confronted with s Dodo. Possibly this animal as well, if more were known about it, had an equally embarrassing rale regarding what may or may not be done to it "between sunset and sunrise " that recalls the constitution of the powers of darkness. When the municipal authorities failed to enlist the sympathies of the Cuban Consul, they requested the American Consul. eon ie act in loco parents. Mr. ('. Denby's conception of the United States' burden of Empire failed the Council just at this point, and it was driven to submit the matter to the Consular Body as a whole. Here, unfortunately, a tactical error was committed, for in the letter to the Senior-Consul reference was made to gambling "under the auspices of the Consul for (uba." The phrase is regrettable, for it is undiplomatic. To the Consular Body it may have conjured up visions of one of their colleagues acting as "croupier" or otherwise catering in person to the desires of the gambling public. This was manifestly unfair to Colonel Benjamin Giberga. We can imagine him saying to his Consular colleagues—"My turn to-day; yours tomorrow. How would you like to be called a croupier The mere suggestion was sufficient, and the letter is returned to the Council "because it refers to one of our colleagues in most disrespectful terms." There for the moment the matter rests, and gambling, we must infer, flourishes on the outskirts of the Settlement. The publication of the correspondence no serious significance, and in the peculiar circumstances governing this community does not imply any rapture in the relations between the Consular Body and the Council. It is prompted solely, as the Minute explains, by a desire couraging ablic interest in the "to achieve good results in en-
affairs of the Settlement and in stimulating criticism of the Council's proceedings."
While it is to be regretted that the Council allowed itself to be put. out of court by the use of an injudicious phrase, general sympathy will be felt with Councillors in their strenuous efforts to put down
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.