The passion of gambling, once settled in a man, seems to take physical root in him and to be almost as difficult to expel as drink, opium, or any other acquired physical vice. In extreme cases, it is often held, gambling tends to absorb all other interests, even swallowing up its associate vices. This, however, is not the normal case. Gambling commonly consorts with drink: gambling-houses are commonly places for the sale of alcoholic liquors, and wherever the law permits, or can be evaded, drink-shops are betting haunts. Professional gamblers are doubtless sober when they ply their craft, for skill and cunning are requisite in most kinds of “mixed” gambling: a broker “cornering” the market, like a bookmaker handling a sudden shift in the odds, or a card-sharper with suspicious dupes, needs to have his wits about him. But it is not as gamblers but as tricksters that these men need to be sober, and as they require sobriety in themselves they desire the opposite in their dupes. Hence, the business of gambling is often done in an atmosphere of alcohol. This is not, indeed, invariably the case. The temperament of some people is so sanguine and so prone to reckless play that no physical stimulant seems necessary. But in Northern European peoples drink is usually necessary to induce that instability of judgment and disregard of the future which are conditions of gambling. The statistics of crime prove beyond all cavil that gambling is the king’s highway to fraud and theft. This is not merely because it loosens general morality and in particular saps the rationale of property, but because cheating is inseparably associated with most actual modes of gambling. This does not imply that most persons who bet are actually cheats or thieves; but persons who continue to be cheated or robbed, half-conscious of the nature of the operations, are fitting themselves for the other and more profitable part if they are thrown in the way of acquiring a sufficient quantity of evil skill or opportunity. The “honour” of a confirmed gambler, even in high life, is known to be a very hollow commodity, and where there is less to lose in social esteem even this slender substitute for virtue is absent. What percentage of “men who bet” would refuse to utilise a secret tip of a “scratched” favourite or the contents of an illegally disclosed sporting telegram? The barrier between fraud and smartness does not exist for most of them.