: The Gamblers Move In on College Sport

into the conduct of intercollegiate athletics be-

cause, by and large, the controversies that rage
over campus sports are of something less than earth-
shattering importance. We are moved to comment now
only because it seems to us that a good guy with a
good idea has taken a kicking around from people
who, in their own interests, ought to know better. The
man is Dr. Forrest C. (“‘Phog”’) Allen, head basketball
coach at the University of Kansas; his idea, that
basketball, which has become a big business, is also
becoming a dirty business.

Specifically, as you may recall, Doctor Allen charged
several weeks ago:

1. That gamblers have become a threat to college
athletics;

2. That Vadal Peterson, Utah University coach, shut
the door in the face of a gambler who came to his hotel
room in New York last spring and asked how much it
would cost to have Utah lose to Dartmouth in the
finals of the National Collegiate Athletic Association
basketball tournament;

_ 3. That professional gamblers have already caused
two boys to “throw”’ college basketball games;

4. That a “scandal that would stink to high
heaven” is in the making.

What happened when this story, filed by Sam Smith,
of the United Press, hit the sports pages was astonish-
ing. Dozens of college basketball coaches and directors
of athletics hastened to give the lie to the Allen
charges. In one way or another, they accused him of
(a) lack of faith in American youth, and (b) seeing
things under the bed.

Simultaneously, Ned Irish, who rose from relative
obscurity as a sports-writer to the acting presidency
of Madison Square Garden on the strength of his flair

| Pint POST does not often poke its editorial nose

for basketball promotion, was doing his best to make .

Phog look like the heel of the month. According to
Trish, the Garden employs so many cops that a gambler
can’t get closer to the playing court than Times
Square and, if he could, the players and coaches are
such sterling characters that a gambler would be

- .»@Wasting his time. The result of all this sugar-coated

double-talk was that Phog Allen’s charges disappeared
from the sports pages within a week, simply because
sports editors tired of printing rebuttals that sounded
like quotations from a high-school principal’s com-

mencement address. And Phog, after shooting the
works on his first announcement, did not have enough
additional libel-proof information to keep his one-man
crusade alive.

Perhaps there is no reason for exhuming the story
now, but we think there,is. Amateur athletics have
lost much of their luster in the last ten years. We have
learned to sneer at “‘tennis bums” and “golf-course
insurance men”; we have learned to accept the overt
professionalization of college football players. Indeed,
we have come so far that the very word ‘“‘amateur’’
now means “‘tyro”’ or “beginner” rather than a person
who does something just because he likes to do it.

Somehow we feel that Phog Allen, sentimentalist
and pop-off guy that he is, had something like that in
mind when he cut loose with his barrage against Gar-
den gambling. He must ‘also have been thinking of
the millions that change hands each Saturday on
college football pools, where the professional gamblers
are now brazen enough to get their information from
the players themselves and from undergraduates
working on campus newspapers. He must have been
thinking of the fact that in Miami this last fall, extra
police were assigned to quell gamblers working high-
school football games. And he must have been thinking
of the millions of kids who want to play ball, either at
the Garden or at Goose Crick Corners Gym, whether
the odds are 6-5, 100-1 or even money, give or take
three points.

No matter what the Allen episode proved, it did
suggest to a lot of people that their estimate of col-
lege athletics ought to be revised again—and down-
ward. And it did make a lot of good cash customers
wonder why professional baseball, under the late
Judge Landis, has been able to deal with its problems
more forthrightly, and to police itself more effectively,

than have intercollegiate sports under the loose politi- —

cal associations which seem to divide their time evenly
between cherishing the ivy and counting the house.
Another Garden basketball season is now in full
swing. For the sake of a lot of kids who enjoy a trip!
to New York, and for the sake of American sports, we
hope that Doctor Allen’s prediction of another and
bigger gambling ‘‘scandal”’ will prove false. In the
meantime, it would seem only routine good sense for
college associations to learn to meet their problems

head on and not merely to hush up the critics. .

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Mr. Whiskers Breathes Easier

TS eight states which have community-property
laws have long been a headache to the Federal
Treasury. The theory of community property is that
husband and wife share equally in the income earned
or enjoyed by either of them. In community-property
states, husbands and wives add their incomes together,
divide it by two and then file separate income-tax
returns. It is easy to see that a man with a $20,000
income comes off better by paying the tax on two
incomes of $10,000 each than he would if he had to
pay the higher rate assessed against the whole $20,000.
The Treasury has repeatedly tried to get around this
by compelling married couples to file joint returns,
but up to now, no soap.
However, a tax case recently decided by the Supreme
Court seems to remove the threat of a spate of new
community-property states, all eager to ease the
citizen’s tax burden by permitting husband and wife
to divide their incomes equally. The case arose from
the attempt of the Internal Revenue officials to collect
from C. C. Harmon, an Oklahoma oil man, a sum
assessed against him as a result of his efforts to take
advantage of the community-property law recently
passed by the Oklahoma legislature. The orig-
inal community-property states—California, Arizona,
Louisiana, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and
Washington—inherited their laws from the colonial
Spanish or French regimes under which husband and
wife were joint and equal owners of all property avail-
able to either of them. Oklahoma, however, did not
inherit her community-property tradition from- any
regime antedating her statehood, but adopted it by
statute. Furthermore, she permitted Oklahoma couples
to go community property or not, as they pleased. The
claim of the Government was that, inasmuch as
Oklahoma passed this law after the Federal-income-

tax law came into effect, it wasreasonableto assume that
the statute was “enacted for the purpose of enabling
the citizens of that state to enjoy the tax advantages
of the traditional community states.”

Mr. Harmon won in the tax court and in the Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals. The Circuit Court was un-
able to see any legal difference between Oklahoma’s
made-to-order community-property law and those of
the eight states which were, so to speak, born in the
community-property tradition. The Supreme Court,
however, felt otherwise and ruled that Oklahoma had
not ‘“‘adopted any legal community-property system.”

Thus the Treasury is free from the fear that the
thirty-nine other states may adopt Oklahoma’s device
for automatic tax reduction.

(.1. Plan for Educating Civilians

PDROBABLY the notion that the war is over is less

prevalent than it was six months ago, but there is
still considerable ersatz optimism around which no
war news seems powerful enough to shake. Perhaps
one way to bring the citizenry back to reality would
be to adopt (in part) the suggestion made by a soldier
in Europe, as reported in a letter by John Groth to
The New York Times. Mr. Groth, who has returned
from Europe’s battle areas, said that what particu-
larly irritated the men at the front was to read accounts
of plans for victory celebrations, directions for conduct
on V-E day and news concerning the insurance of
property against damage by celebrants.

One G.I. asked Mr. Groth, “Why don’t they create
in Central Park a string of foxholes in that wooded,
hilly area north of Eighty-third Street near Central
Park West and put in some representative civilians,
turn on the rain that lasts all day and every day, fire
mortar shells at them, and when the mortars get too
close, make them get out and dig another foxhole, and

80

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when the mortars find that one, make them do it
again? Make them feel like worms dodging a shovel.
After a few days of this and of being wet, standing in
ice water, not having any warm food, a letter from
home or a magazine, ask them whether it is all quiet
on the western front. and whether the war is over.”
Perhaps the home front does not need such a going
over as this to give it a better perspective. But as a
peek into how the men in the foxholes regard fatuous
optimism, Mr. Groth’s report is impressive.

Christmas, 1944

N CHRISTMASTIME, when we want to be gay
and protect ourselves a little while from the
callousness and cruelty of the world, we are tempted
to resent the intrusion of the grim fact that for the
great majority of the human race, Christmas is not
merry at all. The tortured people in Hitler’s jails and
concentration camps; homeless thousands in the war-
ravaged areas of France, Russia, the Balkans, China,
Italy and the Netherlands; our own boys slugging it
out in the freezing plains of Western Europe or the
insect-infested islands of the Pacific—all these seem
very far away from the crowded shops and streets of
our untouched native land.

But the truth is, of course, that Christmas belongs
to dispossessed, suffering and perilously situated peo-
ple more truly than it belongs to the rest of us. The
first Christmas was the concern of a small group of

poor people living under alien, totalitarian rule. Not —

even the promise of a new hope escaped the local Ges-
tapo, and the thoroughness of its murderous activities
is reflected in the Gospel account: ‘In Rama was there
a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great
mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would
not be comforted, because they are not.”

So we need not think of this. Christmas as an inter-
ruption in the great tradition. On the contrary, we
can be sure that those who are far away from home
firesides or who have no present means of celebrating
the day as they wish they could, have not given up on
Christmas at all. One day in the year in which peace
and good will gets even lip service must be especially
precious to those whose lot it is to endure the rigors of
war and witness daily the barren harvest of hate. No
wonder that hard-pressed men everywhere snatch a
moment of time or sacrifice some hard-bought luxury
from their scant stores to celebrate the day. “The
wind is chill. But let it whistle as it will, we’ll keep
our Christmas merry still!”

Printed in U. S. A.

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