Millions from Bets?

Bets can of course be made on any subject, but in England the commonest form of betting is associated with the turf. Accordingly, the proposed 5% tax on betting of all sorts included in the new Churchill budget (TIME, May 3) roused the ire of Britons last week, chiefly because it will tend to raise the price of England's most popular pasteboard commodity: a betting ticket on the Derby, Grand National or other "turf classic." Within the House of Commons, notables waxed wrathful at daring, chubby "Winnie" Churchill, Chancellor of His Majesty's Exchequer.

Mr. Lloyd George: "Such a tax would drive the British people away from established betting firms and into the most pernicious form of gambling: street betting with itinerant 'bookies.' "

Lady Astor: "Betting is a national evil. . . but the proposed tax is a political blunder, and shows the lack of political judgment which has marked the present Chancellor of the Exchequer."

Philip Snowden (Laborite Chancellor in 1924): "The proposed betting tax is immoral and would outrage the sacred feelings of a vast number of Britons. ... It would be almost impossible of collection".

Retort. Chancellor Churchill defended himself roundly: "Betting is certainly an optional luxury and therefore a fit object for taxation. ... It is estimated that -L-6,000,000 per year may be derived from this source. . . . The proposed tax does not alter the legality of betting. . . . Credit and racecourse betting are legal, while street betting is illegal--although in practice everyone can bet with impunity. In that sense, there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. . . . The proposed tax is but a recognition of a condition of so-called vice from which the Exchequer has already received large sums, since the income tax and supertax naturally apply to bookmakers as to everyone else.

"This talk of 'street betting' is nonsense. . . .

"Does anyone suppose a backer who has only to telephone a wager with the full sanction of the law to his credit bookmaker, will, for the sake of avoiding a shortening of the odds equal to a shilling in the pound, wander around in the districts of some manufacturing town looking for a mysterious individual into whose hands he might surreptitiously slip half a crown?"

Clergy Roused. Since avowed national trafficking in even "socalled vice" moved the English Nonconformist Church Council to issue a protest, publicly stigmatizing Mr. Churchill for "conveying the impression to young people that the state not only tolerates but sanctions betting."