To gamble, says my dictionary, is "to play for money in games of
skill or chance," and it adds the information that the word is
derived from the Anglo-Saxon _gamen_, which means "a game". Now, to
me this definition is particularly interesting, because it justifies
all that I have been thinking about the gambling spirit in connexion
with Premium Bonds. I am against Premium Bonds, but not for the
popular reason. I am against them because (as it seems to me) there is
so very little of the gamble about them. And now that I have looked up
"gamble" in the dictionary, I see that I was right. The "chance"
element in a state lottery is obvious enough, but the "game" element
is entirely absent. It is nothing so harmless and so human as the
gambling spirit which Premium Bonds would encourage.
We play for money in games of skill or chance--bridge, for instance.
But it isn't only of the money we are thinking. We get pleasure out of
the game. Probably we prefer it to a game of greater chance, such as
_vingt-et-un_.
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