Writing to The New Witness, "X. L." says:—
My suggestion would be that each successful shot should count 1, whether a winning or losing hazard off the white or red, or a cannon. A cannon-pocket would thus count 2 instead of an arbitrary 4 or 5, and a "cannon-floorer" which can only be a fluke, would reckon 4, instead of an arbitrary 9 or 10.
I have chatted this subject over with one or two friends of late. One of them keeps a billiard room. He saw my point, but suggested that the unit should be 3 instead of 1.
I saw his point, too, and countered it with the proposition that he should charge, under the new regime, should it ever be introduced, a shilling for 50 instead of for 100 up.
Where the table is paid for by the hour billiard room proprietors would not be affected.
Another opinion, gleaned from a distinguished amateur, was antagonistic. He emphasized the skill required in manipulating the balls with a view to obtaining control of the red. It seems to me that clever losing-hazard play off the white should, if anything, be more generously rewarded than losing-hazard play off the red, since, if you happen to drop the red by accident or design, it is replaced on the table, but the object white, once lost, is lost altogether so far as that individual break is concerned. Hence the necessity for the exercise of greater skill in keeping it in play.
I don't deny that there is force in my friend's argument, but I do not think it is impregnable.
To the foregoing J. C. Squire replies in the same paper:—
The real and irrefragable case is based on the undoubted fact that, within limits, variety appeals to the normal human mind more than uniformity. "X. L." may be a severely logical man with a passion for exact mathematics; most of us are not. Amongst people who are interested in Rugby football there are always a certain number who object strongly—on the grounds that the performance isn't relatively worth the points —to the allocation of four points to a drop goal. They are the same people who are extraordinarily angry if a side is beaten by two goals to three tries. The try's the thing, they say; and they believe that only tries should count. Grant them their desire and they would probably push their demands further, and want to award points to each try in inverse proportion to the distance between the spot at which the scoring player grounded the ball and the middle point between the goalposts.
Limit the number of consecutive red losing hazards if you like; but leave, oh leave us a few of our sportive differences, our varieties, our freaks, our approximations, our surprises.
Let "X. L." keep a guard upon his austere and frigid mind, or he will next find himself requesting that after every stroke a player should be compelled to declare before a commissioner of oaths whether or not his shot was a fluke; the balls, in the event of an admission of fluking, being spotted. And let him remember that games: are but models of greater things, and that just as there is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon, so also is there one glory of the red and another of the white.