EXCUSABLE IGNORANCE.

In the course of a very excellent editorial summing up the gambling situation and commenting on probable legislation thereon by our Montana solons the Great Falls Tribune makes the mistake of asserting that:

"The theory that gambling cannot be prevented is the merest folly. It has been prevented and stamped out in a score of states and hundreds of cities."

We have always suspected that the excellent editor of the Tribune was more of a doctrinaire than a practical man, and now we know it. Such an assertion as we have here quoted is entirely beyond proof, and known to every man of the world, to be wholly untrue. The gambling instinct in man is so deeply rooted, so inherent in fact, that it defies all restraint imposed upon it by law and flourishes in spite of it, not only in Montana where it has been a legal crime for the past two years, but everywhere else as well. This newspaper has for a long time held to the opinion that open gambling is the safest for all concerned, and but for the stigma -- more fancied than real -- that attaches to a community that boldly asserts that it licenses gambling, would have been an open advocate of the old style of running the games, for run they will, in spite of law and restrictions. But this leads into a broad field of discussion, not exactly germane to the text. We do not know the daily -- or nightly -- walks of the exemplary gentleman who makes the assertion that "gambling has been stamped out of scores of states and hundreds of cities", but we will say to him in all good-fellowship, that he had better not attempt to build a reputation for general knowledge of the world's ways, on this declaration.