Chapter III: Preface: 1 (2)

I have touched upon hunting; let us now consider the twin-sport of shooting, and let us first consider it in its most favourable aspect. How well do I remember those bright September evenings, long ago, when the rays of the westering sun, striking obliquely on the ruddy clover-heads, bathed them in the rosy light of a summer that still lingered on “the happy autumn fields”! Youth, health, and hope were ours then--youth, health, and hope, and friends! Life lay all before us; and, what was more to the purpose for the present moment, before us, too, were the partridges--a covey scattered among those smiling clover-heads. We go forward to beat them up with all the joy and excitement of that golden time when life has not yet been saddened by the pale cast of thought. The birds rise before us, singly, or in twos. The last shots are fired. The old retriever picks up the fallen game. Then we turn homewards, just as the glorious sun sinks at last behind the high Hampshire hills, and “barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day.” Were we then guilty of cruelty? I answer “No,” because the moral qualities of an act exist only in the mind of the agent,

“For there is nothing either good or bad
But thinking makes it so;”

and it had never occurred to us to question the morality of a sport which gave us such days of happiness, such nights of unbroken repose.

And truly, if we admit, for the sake of argument, at any rate, and making no assumption as against the vegetarian, that it is legitimate for man to use birds and beasts for his food, I see not much that can be justly said in condemnation of shooting such as this. If birds may be used for food, how better can they be killed than by the gun? And thus it appears that it is that much-maligned and much-ridiculed individual the “pot-hunter” who is the best justified of all the shooting confraternity!

Again, if rabbits must be kept under for the sake of agriculture (a proposition which few will be found to dispute), it is certainly far better that they should be shot than be taken by that hideous instrument of torture, the steel trap, or the hardly less cruel contrivance known as “the wire.”

But when we come to the shooting of artificially reared and carefully preserved pheasants, and especially to what is known as “battue shooting,” very different considerations arise. Let us take an instance.

The short December day has drawn to a close. There has been warm work in the coverts. A thousand head of game--pheasants, hares, and rabbits--have been brought to bag. In fact, we have had, not indeed a tremendous battue, as these things are reckoned nowadays, but simply “a jolly day’s covert-shooting.” But now darkness--thick, gloomy, winter darkness--has settled down like a pall upon the woods. There is some snow upon the ground, and with the night has come a sharper frost and a bitter, piercing wind. But what is that to us as we gather together in the warm dining-room, where the lamps are so bright, where the logs burn so keenly, and where thick curtains ward off the draughts of that nipping, eager air, and deaden the sound of the gusts moaning fitfully without? How delightful a festive dinner like this after our day of woodland sport! And yet, as I have raised the first glass of champagne to my lips, a thought has sometimes come to me which has gone nigh to spoil my pleasure. It is the thought of that cover where the fun was so fast and furious, and which literally seemed to swarm with game. I picture it as it is _now_ under the darkness of night. There, within sight of the bright lights around which we are so joyously gathered, _there_ are scores--hundreds may be--of miserable creatures with mangled limbs and bleeding wounds; some with hind-legs broken, dragging themselves piteously over the frosty ground; some writhing in agony which death comes all too slowly to relieve. Ah, if that wounded hare could speak, as she looks at the line of light streaming from our dining-room windows, what a curse might she not breathe against the cruel savages within! What a contrast! _Here_, light, warmth, and pleasure; _there_, darkness, cold, and pain unspeakable! Are not _these_ considerations which should give us pause?

And can it be denied that the man who has learnt to stand at “a warm corner” unmoved while wounded beasts and birds are struggling or piteously crawling in agony all around him, who can listen unmoved to the terrible cry of the wounded hare--a cry like that of a child in pain--can it be denied that that man, who has so deadened his susceptibility to the sufferings of his humble and helpless kindred of the animal world, has himself suffered grievous injury to that which is best in human nature--that sacred instinct of compassion, wherein some thinkers of no mean order have thought they discerned the origin and the very basis of morality?

And what a curse to our country is this selfish mania for the preservation of game--preservation for the purpose of destruction! For this are the country-folk warned off from the quiet woodland ways; for this are the children prohibited from entering the copses to gather wild-flowers; for this are enclosures made, barbed-wire fences erected, footpaths and commons filched from the public, and the landless still further excluded from the land; for this must temptation be constantly set before the eyes of the labourer; for this must the offender against the game laws be called up for sentence before a tribunal of game-preservers; for this must the woods and the country-side be denuded of their most delightful inhabitants--the jay and the magpie, with their lustrous plumage and wild cries; the squirrel, embodiment of life and graceful activity, with his curious winning ways; the quaint, harmless, and interesting little hedgehog; the owl, with its long-drawn melancholy note, as it hawks in the summer moonlight--for this must wood-sides be disfigured by impudent notice-boards, telling us, in the arrogant language of the rich Philistine, that “All trespassers will be prosecuted, all dogs destroyed”; for this must millions of innocent creatures be pitilessly condemned to shocking mutilations and atrocious agonies, long drawn out. Such is “Merry England” under the rule of the game-preserver!

“Strange that where Nature loved to trace
As if for gods a dwelling-place,
There man, enamoured of distress,
Should mar it into wilderness.”

I have now briefly considered those blood-sports which are generally spoken of as “legitimate” sports--namely, hunting and shooting. “But,” someone will ask me, “what of hare-hunting, and coursing, and otter-hunting--are not these ‘legitimate’ sports also?”

Well, over these I care not to delay; a few words will suffice for each.

HARE-HUNTING AND OTTER-HUNTING.

Well has it been said that

“Poor is the triumph o’er the timid hare.”

It is to my mind indeed a pitiable form of pleasure that men should go forth to hunt to death this, the most timorous of animals. Even in the days of bluff King Hal, when humanitarians were indeed few and far between, and it was hardly recognised that men had any duties to the lower animals, there was found a great and good and enlightened man to raise his voice in protest against this sport. “What greater pleasure is there to be felt,” wrote Sir Thomas More in his “Utopia,” “when a dog followeth a hare than when a dog followeth a dog? For one thing is done in both--that is to say, running, if thou hast pleasure therein. But if the hope of slaughter and the expectation of tearing in pieces the beast doth please thee, thou shouldest rather be moved with pity to see a silly, innocent hare murdered of a dog, the weak of the stronger, the fearful of the fierce, the innocent of the cruel and unmerciful.”

Ought we not to feel some shame if we have not advanced farther than this old teacher of nearly four hundred years ago? But it seems that the age of King George V. has still something to learn from the age of King Henry VIII.

And but a few years later, in the reign of that famous King’s still more famous daughter, in “the spacious times,” when kindness to poor animals was but little thought of, do we not hear the voice of the great poet who is not of an age, but for all time, in an exquisite description of the miseries of the hunted hare?--

“By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs, with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still.
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.

“Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn and return, indenting with the way;
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch;
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay.
For misery is trodden on by many,
And, being low, never relieved by any.”

And here let me say that, if some of us have been loud in our protest against hare-hunting by schoolboys (and I refer especially to the case of the Eton beagles), it is because we believe it to be of paramount importance that this duty of kindness to animals should be inculcated upon the young; that this sacred instinct of compassion should be fostered in young minds; and that boys should be restrained from pursuits which tend to deaden this best of all human feelings.

“’Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”

And who shall say what harm may be done to character, if the men who are responsible for education allow it to be supposed by those under their charge that animal suffering is a thing of no account?

As to otter-hunting, or the “otter-worry,” as it is better called, it is a kind of sport of which I have seen a good deal in bygone days, but which I always found abominable. Let me give one example from my own experience. It is a lovely day and a lovely country. The beautiful River Plym is flowing clear and cool in its lower valley depths, between wood-clad hills. I see before me an old quarry-pool. Precipitous rocks stand over it. One little stream, or adit, alone connects it with the river. At the farther end, away from the entrance of this adit, the hillside slopes more gradually, and is covered with broken fragments of rock and quarried stone. On my left the pool lies open to the woods. We had found an otter in the morning, and it was supposed that the creature had taken refuge in the “clitter of rocks” above the pool. Accordingly, men armed with otter-spears, and aided by terriers, endeavour to dislodge it. Suddenly another otter, much larger than the one we have been hunting, emerges from this retreat and dashes into the water. Instantly the pool is surrounded by excited hunters. A man with a spear stands at the adit-head, blocking that way of escape. The water is alive with swimming hounds, while others stand baying on the banks. Now, an otter can stay long under water, but it must rise at intervals for breath; so, after a pause, we hear the shout of “Hoo, gaze!” and I catch sight of a small dark face and large brown eyes for one moment above the surface of the pool. Again and again, at ever-shortening intervals, I see that face appear and disappear. I can never forget it--that wild, scared face, and the terror of those hunted eyes! There is no possibility of escape. Hounds and “sportsmen”--yes, and “sportswomen” too--surround the pool, and the only exit is carefully and effectually guarded. The otter, wildest and most timid of animals, must either attempt to run the gauntlet or be actually drowned in the pool. Only one thought possesses me--that of sickening compassion for this poor, beautiful, hunted creature. Men--and, good heavens! women too--seem frenzied with the desire to kill. No thought of pity seems to dawn upon their minds. So at length, amid yelling men and baying hounds, the wretched “beast of the chase” is forced for dear life’s sake to try the desperate shift of taking to the land, in the vain hope of finding sanctuary in the friendly waters of the Plym, that are so near and yet so far. Vain hope indeed! Scarce twenty yards of flight, and the hounds roll her over. From the carcass thus barbarously done to death the “pads” are cut off as trophies by the huntsman, and the master goes through the ceremony of “blooding” his little son, who has now seen his first “kill.” The boy’s cheeks and forehead are smeared with blood from one of the dripping “pads,” and the “young barbarian” goes home swelling with pride at this savage decoration. What a lesson for him! Thus is the rising generation taught to be gentle and compassionate, and to love “all things, both great and small”! O Sport, what horrible things are done in thy name! How long shall the nation continue to bow the knee to this false god--this bloody Moloch of Sport?

SPURIOUS SPORTS.

But of all the sports of killing which we have hitherto reviewed, this much at least may be said--namely, that they are concerned with the hunting or shooting of wild animals at liberty, in their native haunts. We now have to consider certain other blood-sports, the differentiating feature of which is that they are concerned with the hunting or shooting of animals liberated from captivity for that purpose. Such are rabbit-coursing, the hunting of carted deer, and the shooting of pigeons from traps, which are very commonly referred to as “spurious sports”--a title which they most justly merit.

On pigeon-shooting I will not waste many words. To shoot a strong “blue rock,” released from one of five traps, at a rise of between twenty and thirty yards, is not, as some people think, an easy thing to do. On the contrary, it is a very difficult thing to do, the result being that, even when good shots are competing, many birds get away wounded, to die a lingering death. Moreover, if a test of skill be all that is required, the clay pigeon answers the purpose quite as well as, if not better than, the living bird. I might dwell, too, on the injuries sometimes done to the birds when closely packed in hampers for transport purposes. But it is, I think, sufficient to say that it is now generally recognised in this country that the practice of shooting captive birds from traps has about it none of the elements of “sport” properly so-called. It is a mere medium for betting and money-making, or money-losing, without any of those healthy, invigorating, and athletic concomitants which do something to redeem genuine “sport” from the reproach of cruelty; and if cruelty be the unjustifiable infliction of pain, then it can, I think, hardly be doubted that pigeon-shooting must be classed among cruel sports. Of this opinion was the House of Commons thirty-one years ago; for in the year 1883 a Bill passed through that House, on second reading, to put down this spurious sport by law. And to show how poorly it is now esteemed, even in fashionable circles, it may be mentioned that the Hurlingham Club, where pigeon-shooting was once regularly carried on, some years ago decided to prohibit this unworthy practice in their grounds.

It remains to consider the two spurious sports of rabbit-coursing and the hunting of carted deer. Let us take the latter first.

What are the animals employed for this form of fashionable amusement? They are park-bred deer, kept in paddocks or stables, and carefully fed and exercised. It is said on behalf of the “stag-hunters” (so called) that to do the deer any injury is the last thing they wish for; on the contrary, their desire is to recapture the animal alive and well, in order that he or she may afford sport another day. This, doubtless, is true enough; but, unfortunately, the deer is terrified by the chase, and becomes exhausted in the course of it. Unfortunately, too, there are such things as spiked iron railings and barbed-wire fences, to say nothing of walls and other obstacles with which the hunted deer is confronted in his cross-country flight. The result is inevitable, and such as all reasoning men know to be inevitable--namely, that from time to time terrible “accidents,” as they are euphemistically called, take place, some of which, but by no means all, find their way into the columns of our newspapers. Thus, to give an example, it twice happened within a period of eight months that a miserable hunted deer impaled itself upon a spiked iron fence at Reading, which in its terror it essayed to jump, but which in its exhaustion it failed to clear. I could give case after case in which a hunted deer has lacerated itself in the attempt to leap a barbed-wire fence; broken a leg, or perhaps (more mercifully) its neck, in trying to clear a gate or wall; cut and wounded itself by jumping on a greenhouse or glass frames; fallen exhausted before the hounds, and been bitten and torn by them; sought refuge in a river, canal, or pond, and been drowned by the pursuing pack. Ten such cases are known to have occurred in six months with one pack only, hunting in the Home Counties, and six tame deer were done to death by that same pack within that period.

These cases formed the subject of questions put by me to the late Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, in the House of Commons. I should like to quote his answer given to one of such questions on March 14, 1907: “If such cruelties are perpetrated, and we can do anything to stop them, I shall be very glad. I am against cruelty of any sort, whether under the name of sport or otherwise. I like it rather less under the cloak of sport than otherwise.” Nay, this cruel and contemptible travesty of sport was once, in a lucid interval, condemned, even by that well-known and recognised organ of sport, _The Field_, “the country gentleman’s newspaper.” For in _The Field_ of September 3, 1892, we read as follows:

“If we look at this fiction of chase from an unprejudiced
standpoint, we must admit that it is only prescription and
usage which enable us to retain it in our sporting schedule and
to tolerate it as legitimate. Strictly speaking, it stands on
the same footing as bull and bear baiting, both of which have
had to go to the wall under the influence of what is called the
march of civilization.”[4]

Need I say more? Surely the case is too clear for argument--except, indeed, for certain peers in the Gilded Chamber, whose hidebound prejudice seems to be impervious to reason!

So much for the hunting of carted deer, the spurious sport of the rich. What shall we say of rabbit-coursing, which has been described as the sport of the poor, but which would, I think, be better called “the spurious sport of the spurious poor”? Here, too, I can speak as an eye-witness, and I will repeat the description of what I saw, as it appeared in a London newspaper:

“Wishing to see for myself what goes on at the ‘sport’ of
rabbit-coursing, I took train on Sunday morning to Worcester
Park Station, whence a walk of about a mile leads to the field
where the entertainment is provided. Here was soon gathered
together an assembly of about three hundred ‘sportsmen,’ mostly
lads and larrikins. There was a large number of dogs, chiefly
of the ‘whippet’ breed, and many of them carefully clothed
after the manner of greyhounds. The ear was assailed by the
noise of continual barking, and the nose by whiffs from a
neighbouring sewage farm. After we had waited some little time
a van was drawn on the ground heavily laden with large shallow
hampers packed with live rabbits. Three or four of these
hampers were brought forward to the starting-point; a stout
gentleman who carried a revolver and appeared to ‘boss the
show,’ gave the order ‘to get behind the ropes,’ some juvenile
and promising bookmakers mounted stools, and the fun commenced.

“Two dogs are led to the starting-point amidst shouts of ‘I’ll
lay three to one,’ ‘I’ll lay seven to four,’ etc., quite in
the approved sporting style. A man opens a sort of trap-door
in the lid of one of the hampers, seizes one of the cowering
rabbits by the skin of the back, presents it to each dog
alternately, in order, I presume, to excite him to the utmost,
runs with it, still held in one hand by the skin of the back,
some thirty-five yards, and then flings it down, whereupon a
shot is fired from the revolver, the dogs are released and rush
madly for the prey. What follows requires some explanation.
Let it be remembered that these are, or were, wild rabbits,
among the most timorous of wild creatures; that they have
probably undergone the horrible experience of being driven from
their burrows by the ferret some days (and who shall say how
many days?) before; that they have been sent by rail to town;
that they are carted to the scene of action closely packed in
hampers; that they are, for a long time previously to being
‘coursed,’ surrounded by shouting men and barking dogs, and
that after all this, weak, dazed, and half paralysed with fear,
the victim is ‘dumped down’ in the middle of a strange field.

“The result is what might be expected. He can hardly run, and
knows not where to run. Some come straight back into the mouths
of the dogs, others make a feeble attempt to seek shelter in
the distant hedge. But the result is always the same. In a few
seconds the dogs are upon him. The first seizes him by the back
or hind-quarters; the second, overtaking the first, and not to
be balked of his share of the prey, grabs the victim by the
head and shoulders. Then ensues a tug of war, during which the
miserable rabbit is frequently more than half disembowelled
before he is taken, still alive, or half alive, from the jaws
of the dogs. Not one escapes; he is not given a chance. One
that was put down a few yards in front of two very young dogs,
who were evidently new to the business, might have got away,
but when this was seen a large dog was at once sent after the
fugitive. I am told that at North Country meetings when a
puppy is entered a rabbit is frequently mutilated by having
a leg broken or an eye put out; but I saw nothing of this at
Worcester Park.

“I should mention that I was joined by a friend from New
Malden, well known in the neighbourhood for humanitarian
efforts, and that we were at once ‘spotted’ as alien
interlopers, and looked at askance in consequence. Possibly
the result was greater caution in the management of the
proceedings. But we saw quite enough. Fifteen wretched
creatures were done to death in forty-five minutes, and the
‘sport’ goes on all day and every Sunday. I counted the steps
taken by the man who ran forward with each rabbit, and never
did they exceed thirty-five. A really wild rabbit in his own
familiar haunts might have some chance at that. But these
poor cowering things, tortured to make a hooligans’ holiday!
The mere monotony of it was sickening. And yet when a Bill is
brought into Parliament to make such abominations illegal, a
noble lord, one of the pillars of the Jockey Club, opposes
it because it ‘would affect the poorer classes far more than
themselves,’ and because it is ‘a piece of class legislation’
(Lord Durham in the House of Lords, _The Times_, March 4,
1902). Why not go back to cock-fighting and bull-baiting at
once?”[5]

Such are the sports that make England great, that strengthen the muscles and sinews of a conquering Imperial race! Let us rejoice, then, that we have an Hereditary Chamber, where faddists and fanatics are unknown, to throw the ægis of its protection over the pleasures of rich and poor alike, and where the high-souled, high-bred scions of a time-honoured aristocracy magnanimously defend the cherished institutions of our forefathers against the attacks both of blatant democrats and sickly sentimentalists!

THE ETHICS OF SPORT.

It was said by a noble lord in the Upper House not long ago that “Physical courage and love of sport have been for centuries the distinguishing characteristics of the British race.” Is there any necessary relation between these two things? I take leave to doubt it--indeed, I entirely deny it--if by “sport” these “blood-sports” are intended. But let us set beside this wonderful pronouncement the statement of a cultivated and enlightened Englishman who was for many years resident in Burmah. In that charming book, “The Soul of a People,” Mr. H. Fielding writes as follows:

“It has been inculcated in us from childhood that it is a manly
thing to be indifferent to pain--not to our own pain only,
but to that of all others. To be sorry for a hunted hare,
to compassionate the wounded deer, to shrink from torturing
the brute creation, has been accounted by us a namby-pamby
sentimentalism, not fit for man, fit only for a squeamish
woman. To the Burman it is one of the highest of all virtues.
He believes that all that is beautiful in life is founded on
compassion, and kindness, and sympathy--that nothing of great
value can exist without them.”

May not our much-vaunted Christianity learn something from this despised religion of the Buddha, first taught by Gautama on the banks of the Ganges some six hundred years before Christ? For what is it that Buddhism teaches us? It teaches as a first principle to do no harm to any living thing; it teaches mercy without limit, and compassion without stint. Of the Burmese Buddhists we read: “They learn how it is the noblest duty of man, who is strong, to be kind and loving to his weaker brothers, the animals.”

Contrast with that the following, taken at random from among my newspaper cuttings (it is a paragraph from the _Morning Post_):

_June 14, 1904._

“The Carlisle Otter Hounds met at Longtown yesterday, and had
the best hunt that has taken place in the Esk for fifty years.
A splendid otter was put up at Red Scaur, and for four hours
he kept men, hounds, and terriers at bay. He left the river
several times for the woods and rocks, and ran the woods as
cunningly as a fox. Eventually, when climbing a steep rock for
a hole, he fell back exhausted into the water, and the hounds
despatched him. His body was presented to Sir Richard Graham.”

No thought of pity here for the poor wild creature, hunted, harried, and remorselessly pursued by men and hounds for four mortal hours--in water, through woods, over rocks, ever flying in all the agony of fear, till the last dregs of strength are exhausted, and, on the very threshold of the longed-for refuge, he falls, hopeless and helpless, in the stream, where “the hounds despatched him.” Such is a “grand otter hunt,” the best that had taken place in the Esk for fifty years! Truly we may smile at those holy men of the Buddhists who carried bells on their shoes in order to give warning as they walked to the little creatures in the long grass; but for my part I own that, upon the whole, I would far sooner be classed with these poor sentimentalists, who have seen in their hearts the coming of that “milder day” for which the great poet who sang of “Hartleap Well” so devoutly longed, than with that flower of muscular Christianity, the stalwart Britisher, so distinguished for his love of sport and his contempt for pain--his own generally excepted!

How, then, stands this question of sport considered as a question of ethics? A great German thinker, as we all know, believed that he had found the very basis of morality in the sacred instinct of compassion. I will not argue whether Schopenhauer was right or wrong in that contention, but this, at any rate, we must all admit--namely, that without compassion all our boasted morality would be but as sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal. Nay, whether it be or be not the basis of morality, this at least is true that, without compassion, no morality worth having could exist at all.

Let us listen for a moment to Rousseau on this matter:

“Mandeville was right in thinking that, with all their systems
of morality, men would never have been anything but monsters if
Nature had not given them _compassion_ to support their reason;
but he failed to see that _from this one quality spring all
the social virtues_ which he was unwilling to credit mankind
with. In reality, what is generosity, clemency, humanity, if
not _compassion_, applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to the
human race as a whole? Even benevolence and friendship, if we
look at the matter rightly, are seen to result from a constant
compassion, directed upon a particular object; for to desire
that someone should not suffer is nothing else than to desire
that he should be happy.… The more closely the living spectator
identifies himself with the living sufferer, the more active
does pity become.”

And again:

“How is it that we let ourselves be moved to pity if not by
getting out of our own consciousness, and becoming identified
with the living sufferer; by leaving, so to say, our own being
and entering into his? We do not suffer except as we suppose
he suffers; _it is not in us, it is in him_, that we suffer.…
Offer a young man objects on which the expansive force of his
heart can act--objects such as may enlarge his nature, and
incline it to go out to other beings, in whom he may everywhere
find himself again. Keep carefully away those things which
narrow his view, and make him self-centred, and tighten the
strings of the _human ego_.”

It is upon this theme that Schopenhauer becomes so eloquent, and with larger view even than that of Rousseau, as it seems, he brings the lower animals within the protection of his moral system.

“There is nothing that revolts our moral sense so much as
cruelty. Every other offence we can pardon, but not cruelty.
The reason is found in the fact that cruelty is the exact
opposite of _compassion_--viz., the direct participation,
independent of all ulterior considerations, in the sufferings
of another, leading to sympathetic assistance in the effort
to prevent or remove them; whereon, in the last resort,
all satisfaction and all well-being and happiness depend.
It is this compassion alone which is the real basis of all
_voluntary_ justice and all _genuine_ loving-kindness.… There
is another proof that the moral incentive disclosed by me is
the true one. I mean the fact that _animals_ also are included
under its protecting ægis. In the other European systems of
ethics no place is found for them, strange and inexcusable as
this may appear. It is asserted that beasts have no rights;
the illusion is harboured that our conduct, so far as they
are concerned, has no moral significance; or, as it is put in
the language of these codes, that there are no duties to be
fulfilled towards animals. Such a view is one of revolting
coarseness--a barbarism of the West.… Compassion for animals is
intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be
confidently asserted that he who is cruel to living creatures
cannot be a good man.”[6]

So wrote a young German philosopher some seventy years ago; and all that has since happened in the world of thought has but served to strengthen his teaching as to our duty towards the lower animals. For since he wrote science and thought have become profoundly modified by one of those epoch-making inductions which, at very rare intervals, some great thinker is inspired to make. We have seen the establishment and the almost universal acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, involving as one of its corollaries the unity of life and the “universal kinship” of man with his humbler brethren--or cousins, if you will--of the animal world.

I venture, then, to offer this teaching for my readers’ consideration. In its light I would ask them to view these questions, and if they shall think that that light is the light of reason and truth, then to follow it wheresoever it may lead. I do not think it will lead them to offer fresh hecatombs upon the blood-stained altar of Sport.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] One of the strongest objections to fox-hunting consists in this, that each season must necessarily be preceded (so at least we are told) by the barbarities of “cub-hunting.” The slaughter of these poor little cubs is cruel and pitiful work. Sometimes, too, a vixen falls a victim to the hounds while her cubs are still dependent on her for their food. No doubt an early ride on a fine September or October morning is a pleasant thing, and the “sportsman” need not know much about what goes on in the coverts, or trouble himself to think about it! But the fact remains that this is a miserable and cruel form of “sport.” And what shall we say of the practice of “digging out” a wretched fox when, perhaps after a long run, he has sought refuge by “going to ground”? Can anything be conceived more callous or more cowardly? Yet educated, and, presumably, thinking men, and women too--Heaven save the mark!--stand by and enjoy the fun! Such is the debasing effect of “sport” upon the human mind and character!

[3] In the _Westminster Gazette_ of August 15, 1908, a woman wrote on “The Enchantments of the New Forest,” and this is what she says: “Anyone with a drop of sport-love in them, given a nag of some kind, will not be a day in the forest before he finds himself chasing some animal, alive or dead.” The sentiment is surely even more deplorable than the grammar.

[4] It must in fairness be added that the article from which the above extract is made was subsequently repudiated by the editor as being “quite opposed to the line which _The Field_ has always taken.” It seems that “by an oversight the article was inserted during the absence of the departmental editor.” I quote it, nevertheless, as showing that over twenty years ago the truth as to this matter had dawned upon the mind of at least one of the leader-writers of a great sporting paper.

[5] Moreover, there is a sport which, as the Rev. J. Stratton has pointed out, might well supersede rabbit-coursing--viz., whippet-racing. “It cannot be pleaded,” he says, “that if we were to stop the coursing of captured rabbits we should be unduly depriving workmen of recreation, for ‘whippets’ could be employed just as well in races as in chasing rabbits. Of the first of these sports I can speak as an eye-witness. In whippet-racing a course is formed, which is kept free for the dogs by ropes on either side. At one end, men have in hand the whippets that are about to compete, and here stands the starter, holding his pistol. ‘Runners-up’ now come on to the course, carrying in their hands a towel or scarf, and starting from the front of the dogs, and frantically waving the article they hold, and whistling, and calling to the animals, they begin to run towards the far end of the course, where the winning-line is marked out and the judge has taken up his post. When the right moment has arrived, the pistol is fired, and the whippets are liberated, and commence to travel the course with the speed of the wind, the ‘runners-up’ always getting well beyond the winning-point before the dogs overtake them, in order that the latter may pass it at their utmost pace. It is altogether a remarkable sight, and had I never seen the thing, I could not have believed that the little dogs would enter into the contest with the ardour they do.”

[6] My quotations are from Mr. A. B. Bullock’s translation of “The Basis of Morality,” see pp. 170, 208, 218.

SPORT AND AGRICULTURE

BY EDWARD CARPENTER

It has frequently been pointed out that the enthusiasm for “sport” is the relic of a very primitive instinct in man. In that sense it is quite natural. In early days the sheer necessity of pursuing and killing animals for food, or of hunting down and destroying beasts of prey, must have become very deeply ingrained; and the satisfaction of that need became an instinctive pleasure, so much so that oftentimes nowadays the pleasure remains, though the need has long disappeared.

In the village where I live there is a countryman of a very primitive type, who goes almost mad with excitement when the hunt is out. Though over forty years of age, he has been known more than once to leave his horses with the plough in the field and career wildly after the hounds for two or three hours on end, careless of what might happen to his deserted team. At the public-house afterwards in the evening he recounts in a shrill voice every detail of the “find” or the “kill.” “Talk about your oratorios and concerts,” he shouts, “_there’s no music, I say, like the ’ounds_!” On one occasion when the hunt was baffled by the fox getting into a narrow cleft in some rocks, and with the fall of evening the hounds had to be drawn off, this man positively remained on the spot, watching, all night; and when the huntsmen returned in the morning with a terrier, he followed the terrier as far as ever he could--head and shoulders--into the hole, helped the dog to clutch the fox, and all three--dog, fox, and man--suddenly freed, rolled together down the steep cliff-side into a stream below! Such is the force of the old instinct, and the story helps one to realise the strange conditions of sheer necessity under which primitive man lived, though in the light of actual life and the present day it is ludicrous enough, even if not revolting in its ferocity.

So far from there being any necessity in this case to rid the country-side from a beast of prey, it is quite probable that the fox in question had been imported from Germany--as a certain number undoubtedly are--simply in order to provide a country squire’s holiday! A French lady, herself very fond of riding, told me lately that in her native Burgundy foxes are still very numerous, and have to be hunted down in consequence of the damage they do; but when I informed her that our foxes are largely “made in Germany,” and brought over in order to do artificial damage and so be artificially hunted, she laughed almost hysterically--as surely she was entitled to do.

There is this futile artificiality about almost all our “sport.” It is one thing to sit all night in the lower branches of a spreading tree just outside some little Indian village, in order to get a chance of shooting the dangerous man-eating tiger as he comes forth from the jungle, and quite another to pot tame pheasants at the corner of a wood, or half-tame grouse as they fly over the “battery” in which you (and a gamekeeper) are safely ensconced. The pheasants have been reared under a barnyard hen and fed by hand till they are as tame as fowls, and the grouse can only be persuaded to fly to the guns by a quarter-mile-long line of “drivers,” who with much shouting and waving of flags compel them to rise from the heather. The gamekeeper gets his guinea tip, and you in return get the credit of a large bag secured by his kind assistance! The force of humbug could no further go. The truth is, all this modern “sport” is a simple playing at hunting and shooting.

And if it were merely playing, though it might be somewhat laughable, there would be no need to protest. But, unfortunately, there are two serious considerations involved, which are by no means “play” to those concerned. One (which has been touched on elsewhere) is the needless cruelty to the animals; the other is the serious ruin of our agriculture and detriment to our farm populations.

The damage done by fox-hunting to fences and crops is obvious enough to everyone. But there are other complications. In a hunting district the tenants far and wide are invited to find homes for the puppies which are being reared for the replenishment of the pack. It is an ungrateful task. The puppy is a pest on the farm; it is in everybody’s way, and it has its muzzle eternally in the milk-buckets. Its board and lodging are not paid for; but--oh, gracious compensation!--the farmers who “walk puppies” are given a dinner at the end of the puppy-rearing season, and get their chance of a prize for the best exhibited. Partly in consideration of these favours, but more because they do not want to offend the gentry in general or their own landlords in particular, the tenants put up with these obnoxious additions to their households. Furthermore, as foxes must on no account be killed by private hands, even though they are constantly raiding the farmyards, the owners of the hunt offer compensation for fowls killed or wounded, as they also, of course, do for fences and crops damaged.

But what a situation for any self-respecting farmer! To see a tribe of “gentlemen and ladies” tearing over his land and making havoc of his new-sown wheat, to find half a dozen fowls some morning with their heads bitten off, to have his wife at her work tumbling over an intruding puppy--and then to have to go, cap in hand, to ask for compensation for all these things! What an unworthy position for him to be in, and how galling to think that his life-work and the very dignity of his profession are so lightly regarded, or that the loss of them can be counted as easily atoned for by a few shillings.

GROWING GROUSE.

As to the grouse moors, the damage done to agriculture and to the popular interest in connection with them--though it might not appear obvious at first--is very considerable. A hundred years ago the moors in my neighbourhood--as in many other parts of the country--were common lands. The people had rights of pasture over them for their cattle and sheep, they kept down the rabbits, using the latter largely for food, and they were able to grow farm crops up to the very edge of the heather. To-day these same lands--enclosed on the plea of public benefit!--are given over to grouse. The rabbits have become to a great extent the gamekeepers’ perquisites, and very valuable “perks” too. They are allowed to swarm, and consequently they not only destroy what pasturage there is on the moors, but, penetrating into the farms along the moor edges, they damage very seriously the cereal and other crops. I know places where I am credibly informed that a hundred years ago oats were commonly grown, but which now are quite impossible for such a purpose. And--such is the sway of the institution--young farmers desiring to shoot the rabbits on their own tenancies are looked askance at and discouraged from doing so for fear they might possibly bag a brace of grouse! When we consider the well-known expense involved in rearing and shooting these sacred birds, and at the same time the damage, just described, to ordinary agriculture, we have again a sad picture of the prevailing futility. On some farms--especially, I believe, in Devonshire--where grouse are not concerned, but where rabbit-shooting is a favourite recreation of the landlord class--the spinneys and copses are allowed to become so infested with bunnies that general farming is greatly paralyzed in consequence.

Indirectly in a similar way does pheasant-shooting lead to agricultural damage. In the present day--partly out of fear of Lloyd George and all his works--the tendency of landowners is to sell and make ready money from the old oak and other timber in their woods, and by planting plentiful spruce and fir to turn the plantations into pheasant covers. The number of gamekeepers charged with preserving these plantations multiplies,[7] and _their_ idea of duty consists in the destruction of any and every winged and four-footed creature that might possibly be harmful to the pheasants or their eggs. It would probably surprise the reader to have a complete list of such--and I do not presume to supply it--but it includes hawks and owls of various kinds, jays, magpies, stoats, weasels, and even the beautiful and probably innocent squirrel. All these fall victims to the gun or the trap, and, needless to say, the balance of Nature is seriously upset in many directions. For our purpose here we need only point out the consequent and ruinous swarming of mice and sparrows. The destruction of hawks and owls in particular has led to this result. Clouds of sparrows, ever multiplying, occupy the hedgerows and descend upon the cornfields as soon as ever the corn is ripe, doing countless damage--to which the mice contribute their share. No one who has not witnessed it with his own eyes could believe the loss to the farmer from this cause alone. And again we are struck with the foolishness which allows this to go on merely for the sake of breeding tame birds for the guns of very tame sportsmen.

The pheasant is a very beautiful bird, and if allowed to breed in our woods under natural conditions, would hold its own in a modest way, and with the other denizens of the woodlands, the squirrels and the jays and the owls and the hawks, would render these places really interesting and delightful resorts. It seems sad that all these animal possibilities should be destroyed for the sake of what is often little more than human brag and bag! As an instance of the unintelligent way in which these things are worked, it may be mentioned that even that stately bird, the heron, is a mark for, and is commonly shot down by, the gamekeeper. And why? Because, forsooth! it not unfrequently feeds upon _trout_. The trout is a sacred fish, and therefore the glorious heron must be shot! Whether the gamekeeper wars upon the kingfisher for the same reason I do not know. But it seems quite possible that he does, for beauty and rarity are no defence.

PHEASANT OR PEASANT?

There is another aspect of the subject which must not be passed over. To-day the small-holding question is coming very much to the fore. The splendid results obtained by a combination of small farms and agricultural co-operation, already conspicuous in Denmark, and coming into sight in Ireland, are strongly urging us in England in the same direction. A large multiplication of small-holders, with facilities for their combined action and co-operation, is to-day the one promising outlook for British agriculture. Yet it is notorious that the County Councils are much more inclined to hinder than to help this movement. And why? There may be different reasons; but undoubtedly one of the most powerful is--sport. It is obvious that a population of small holders--particularly if associated and combined--would form a very serious obstacle to the latter. A squire with three or four farms under him, of 500 acres each, can easily make terms with his tenants, and persuade or compel them to favour the hunting and shooting; but what would he do with fifty small-holders? It would be a very different pair of shoes, and he would have to walk (like Agag) somewhat delicately. The compensations, and the obstructions, and the complications generally, would bring the old order to an end.

Thus we come very clearly, I think, to a certain parting of the ways in the matter of our agricultural future in this country. It all comes to this: Are we going to continue for ever playing at the land question--that question whose vitality and importance we daily more and more perceive--or are we going to be serious about it? We cannot take both ways. On the one hand, we have the Scottish Highlands depopulated for the sake of deer; we have English farms more or less ravaged, and farmers terrorised for the sake of fox-hunting; we have grouse-moors and pheasant-covers, with their concomitant evils, let to rich Americans and titled grocers; and, on the other hand we _may_ have a real live agriculture and a brisk independent rural population. We cannot have both. If we retain the present system--conducing, no doubt, to a healthy schoolboy type of squire--it means a downcast, stupefied, unenterprising peasantry. If we turn seriously to the re-establishment of agriculture, and of a real live, manly population on the land, that will undoubtedly mean the abandonment of a good deal that goes by the name of sport.[8]

The time grows short, for indeed anxious problems lie in the near future before this country, and a choice has to be made--a choice that may have a good deal to do with the position of England in the world. The country-sides have got to stop playing at rural life, and to take it up seriously. Nor, after all, would the abandonment of sport as the chief object of the country gentleman’s existence mean the abandonment or discouragement of all wild life. Rather the contrary. We all in these over-civilised times appreciate the value and importance of wild nature; and however effective and widespread we may make our agriculture, we shall surely also demand the establishment of extensive natural reserves for all kinds of free plants and creatures. We have seen that “sport” is not really favourable to wild nature life, but only to some very artificial and limited forms. With the abandonment of sport in its present shape, it is possible that the landowners of the future--whether private individuals or public bodies--will turn their attention to the making of splendid nature-resorts in wood and mountain and moor, where every kind of creature may have free access and free play, unharmed by man, and open to his friendly companionship and sympathetic study.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The following is quoted from Mr. Lloyd George’s speech at Bedford (October, 1913):

“In 1851 you had in this country 9,000 gamekeepers; in 1911 there were 23,000. During that period the number of labourers on the soil went down by 600,000. The number of gamekeepers went up by 250 per cent., and the number of labourers down by 600,000. Pick up a copy of the _Field_ and look at the advertisements there, and you will realise the extent of the evil. Here is one advertising shooting rights for estates where last year 5,000 pheasants were shot. Here is a sportsman who advertises 1,000 acres, with coverts to hold 7,000 rabbits on his estate. You try a small holding _there_! Agriculture has had a bad time. It has had to pass through a time of great crisis. What would have been done in any other trade if it had to face the difficulties which agriculture had? A great capitalist would have introduced new machinery, got the best labour, and would have put the whole of his energy, brain, and enterprise into restoring that industry. He would have gone, if necessary, for years without any return, and at last he would have pulled through. That is what has happened in many industries in this country. What has happened here? What has the great capitalist done in agriculture? He has trebled the number of his gamekeepers, he has put land out of cultivation, he has increased enormously the number of pheasants which have been turned on to the land.”

[8] See the “Report of the Land Enquiry Committee,” vol. i., 1913, which in its chapter on “Game” contains a severe condemnation of the practice of excessive game preserving. “The damage done by game is too serious to be overlooked. Even when the tenant farmer is fully compensated the damage amounts to a national loss.… Not merely is land under-cultivated, but large areas are altogether out of cultivation owing to the preservation of game. This land, instead of providing food for the people, provides sport and delicacies for the few, and is the source of much damage and annoyance to neighbouring farmers.”

THE COST OF SPORT

BY MAURICE ADAMS

“Now Dives daily feasted and was gorgeously arrayed,
Not at all because he liked it, but because ’twas good for trade;
That the people might have calico, he clothed himself in silk,
And surfeited himself on cream, that they might get the milk;
He fed five hundred servants, that the poor might not lack bread,
And had his vessels made of gold that they might get more lead:
And e’en to show his sympathy with the deserving poor,
He did no useful work himself that they might do the more.”

ERNEST BILTON.