Scorecard

PRO-SALOON LEAGUE

Although Governor Rockefeller opposed it on "philosophical grounds," last November New Yorkers voted for a statewide lottery, whose proceeds would go to public schools, and state officials are now devising the form the lottery will take.

It will almost certainly be based on horse races, as in New Hampshire, since Congress, at New Hampshire's behest, passed a law exempting state-run lotteries from the 10% gambling tax, provided winners are determined by horse races; and the lottery tickets may well be sold by vending machines.

If this plan is adopted by the New York legislature, the vending machines would most likely be situated in banks, subway stations, department stores and transportation terminals. They would not, an Albany source said, be put in "uncontrolled" places on the street or in bars, "where every drunk can operate the machine."

We leave the morality of lotteries to those better versed in philosophy, but we cannot allow bars to be so offhandedly calumniated. It has been our experience that saloons are civilized and civilizing places frequented, for the most part, by men and women who would be quite able to operate a lottery-ticket machine with discernment and style, if they so fancied. Moreover, in this regard, as well as others, we would gladly stack habitu�s of bars against those of subway stations, transportation terminals, department stores and even banks.

A FIRE IS PUT OUT

What is especially tragic about Donald Campbell's death last week on Coniston Water in England's Lake District is that it was, as he foresaw, of greater news value than the attainment of his goal—a run in excess of 300 mph—would have been. Two days before his old boat, Bluebird, became airborne, flipped and sank in 140 feet of water, Campbell, who was 45, had told reporters: "You boys will see me carried away in a box one of these days. That's what you're all really here for."

Afterward David Wynne-Morgan, who was once Campbell's manager, summed it up. "He was born too late, really," he said. "People didn't seem to care anymore about his achievements. He was a sort of Boy's Own Paper hero and should have lived in the '20s and '30s." Campbell ruefully agreed. At Coniston, during the nine-week wait for the proper weather, he would buy a round at the Sun Hotel bar and say, "We've never really grown up, any of us, you know. God help us the day we do." Moreover, his explanations that he was striving to break records "for Great Britain, old boy," or to give "the old flag a flutter," seemed poignantly dated.

Bluebird, in which Campbell previously had set the record of 276.33 mph, was built in 1954. Although, according to her designer, Ken Norris, she was "due for the museum, really," Campbell had fitted her with a jet engine, which, he was fond of relating, was capable of lifting her straight into the air if she were stood on end. Why Bluebird left the surface of Coniston Water, when Campbell was doing an estimated 310 to 320 mph, has not been determined; one possibility is that she crossed her own wake, which caused her to hop or tramp until her nose was lifted beyond a safe pitch angle. Campbell had always had some tramping with Bluebird, but he evidently didn't feel it worth correcting.

For Campbell there was no choice but to have a go at it. "There are things in life you must do," he once said. "It's darned difficult to get inside yourself and find out why. All you know is that there is a fire burning inside."