arson ... and on being
conveyed to a police station and searched he was found to be Miss
Vivien Warren.

At intervals in the summer and early autumn of 1913 the male section
of the public had been horrified and scandalized at the destruction
going on in racing establishments, particularly those of Sir George
Crofts and of a well-known South American millionaire, whose
distinguished services to British commerce and immense donations to
Hospitals and Homes would probably be rewarded by a grateful
government. If these outrages were not stopped, horse-racing and
race-horse breeding must come to a stand-still; and we leave our
readers to realize what _that_ would mean! There would be no horses
for the plough or the gig, or the artillery gun-carriage;
no--er--fox-hunting, and without fox-hunting and steeple-chasing and
point-to-point races you could have no cavalry and without cavalry
you could have no army. If we neglected blood stock we would deal
the farmer a deadly blow, we should--er--

You know the sort of argument? Reduced to its essentials it is
simply this:--That a few rich people are fond of gambling and fond
of the excitement that is concentrated in the few minutes of the
horse race. Some others, not so rich, believe that by combining
horse-racing with a certain amount of cunning and bold cheating
they can make a great deal of money. A few speculators have invested
funds in spaces of open turf, and turn these spaces into race
courses. Having no alternative, no safer method of gambling offered
them, and being as fond of gambling as other peoples of the world,
the men of the labouring classes and a few of their women, the
publicans and their frequenters, army officers, farmers, and women
of uncertain virtue stake their money on horses they have never
seen, who may not even exist, and thus keep the industry going. And
the chevaliers of this "industry," the go-betweens, the parasites of
this sport, are the twelve thousand professional book-makers and
racing touts.

Somehow the Turf has during the last hundred years, together with
its allies the Distillers and Brewers, the Licensed Victuallers and
the Press that is supported by these agencies, acquired such a hold
over the Government Departments, the Labour Party, the Conservative
Party, and Liberal politicians who are descended from county
families, that it has more interest with those who govern us than
the Church, the Nonconformist Conscience, the County Palati