Chapter VI: Preface: 1 (5)

It may seem strange that the sporting propensity of schoolboys should have thus defied and survived the ban placed upon it by the pious Founder; but the history of Eton shows it to have been always the home of cruel sports. We are told by Sir H. Maxwell Lyte, the historian of the school, that “sports which would now be considered reprehensible were tolerated and even encouraged at Eton in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” “No work,” he says, “was done on Shrove Tuesday after 8 a.m., and at Eton, as elsewhere on this day, the practice prevailed of torturing some live bird. The college cook carried off a crow from its nest, and, fastening it to a pancake, hung it up on the school door, doubtless to serve as a target.” Then, again, there was the once famous and popular ram-hunt. “The college butcher had to provide a ram annually at election-tide, to be hunted and killed by the scholars,” the unfortunate animal being hamstrung and beaten to death in Weston’s Yard. Even in the nineteenth century such sports as bull-baiting, badger-baits, dog-fights, and cat and duck hunts, were “organised for the special edification of the Eton boys.”

It is from these good old times that the present hare-hunt is a survival, and though it may now be conducted, as Dr. Warre has stated, in a legal and “sportsmanlike” manner, this certainly was not the case at a period no more remote than the headmastership of Dr. Balston (1857-1864), as we learn from Mr. Brinsley Richards’ well-known book, “Seven Years at Eton,” from which the following passage is quoted:

“It is not pleasant to have to write that the Beagles were
often made to hunt a miserable trapped fox which had lost one
of its pads. Those who bought maimed foxes, as more convenient
for beagles to hunt than strong, sound foxes, should have
reflected that they might thereby tempt their purveyors to
mutilate these animals. How could it be ascertained whether the
fox supplied by a Brocas ‘cad’ had been maimed by accident or
design? It was an exciting thing for jumping parties of Lower
Boys, when out in the fields they saw the beagle-hunt pass them
in full cry--first the fox, lolloping along as best he could,
but contriving somehow to keep ahead of his pursuers; then
the pack of about ten couples of short, long-eared, piebald,
or liver-streaked hounds, all yelping; then the Master of the
Hunt, with his short copper horn; the Whips, who cracked their
hunting-crops and bawled admonition to the dogs with perhaps
unnecessary vehemence; and lastly the Field of about fifty.”

It is specially worthy of note, as bearing upon a later controversy, that Mr. Brinsley Richards states that “runs were far better when a man was sent out with a drag.” The drag is thus proved to have been in successful use at Eton almost as long ago as when the Beagles were first openly tolerated.

The prohibition once being cancelled, the popularity of the hare-hunt grew apace until it reached its zenith in the reign of Dr. Warre, when the doings of the hunt were regularly reported--in choice sporting jargon--in the _Eton College Chronicle_, so that the whole school, even to the youngest boys, was made aware of them. A reference to old numbers of the _Chronicle_ will show plenty of instances. Here are one or two extracts taken almost at random from these records of the chase:

“_March 20, 1897._--A hare was soon put up in the first
wheat-field, and, running back through two small spinneys in
the field she was found in, went away towards Ditton Park.
Hounds ran very fast over the Bath Road and straight away into
Turner’s gardens. After being bustled about for fifteen minutes
in the gardens, our hare went away at the far end. Turning
left-handed, our hare was viewed running parallel with the road
and into some brickfields.… After we had been casting round for
some time without success among the rows of bricks, hounds were
taken back into a small hut. Hardly had they got inside before
old Varlet pulled her out from under a rafter, absolutely
stiff.”

“_February 23, 1899._--Time, one hour, fifty minutes. A very
good hunt, since scent was only fair, and we were especially
unlucky to lose this hare, which was beat when she got back to
Salt Hill. On the next day we heard that our hare had crawled
up the High Street to Burnham, and entered a public-house so
done that it could not stand, and was caught by some boys, who
came to tell us half an hour afterwards, but we had just gone
home. Too bad luck for words!”

And so on, with repeated references to “breaking her up,” and hounds “thoroughly deserving blood.”[22]

Here, again, is the published testimony of a spectator of one of these successful runs:

“On February 4, 1899, being in the vicinity of Eton, I had an
opportunity of seeing one of these hare-hunts, and I will give
a short and exact description of what took place.

“At three o’clock some 180 boys, many of them quite young,
sallied forth for an afternoon’s sport with eight couples of
the College Beagles. A hare was found at 3.15 near the main
road leading to Slough. It was chased through the churchyard
and workhouse grounds at this town into a domain dotted with
villas, called Upton Park. Escaping from this spot, it ran
towards Eton, but soon doubled back to Upton Park, the numerous
onlookers in the Slough Road lustily shouting at the dazed
creature all the time. These circular chases were thrice
repeated, the hare always getting back to Upton Park.

“Twice did the animal come within a few paces of where I was
standing, and its condition of terror and exhaustion was
painful to behold. The boys, running after the hounds, were
thoroughly enjoying the thing, and two masters of the College,
I was told, were amongst them. Now for the final scene, at
which a friend of mine was present.

“The hare, which had been hunted for two hours, having got into
a corner at Upton Park which was bounded with wire-netting, was
seized by the hounds and torn. The master of the pack then ran
up, got hold of her, and broke her neck. The carcass was handed
to one of the dog-keepers, who cut off the head and feet, which
trophies were divided among the followers. The keeper with his
knife then opened the body, and the master, taking it in his
hands and holding it high above the hounds, rallied them with
cries, and finally threw it into their midst, as they had,
in the language of the _Eton College Chronicle_, ‘thoroughly
deserved blood.’

“I make no comments upon these doings; I only say that I think
the British public ought to know how boys are being trained
at our foremost school in respect to the cultivation of
compassionate instincts towards the beings beneath us.”

It is not surprising that the Humanitarian League should have addressed remonstrances to Dr. Warre on the subject of the Beagles; one wonders rather that this “old Eton institution” should have so long remained unchallenged by societies which profess to protect animals from injury, and to teach humanity to the young, especially as Dr. Warre was himself a member of the committee of the Windsor and Eton Branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and as Etonian subscriptions go yearly to provide a fund for prosecuting carters and drovers who ill-use the animals under their charge!

THE LIBERTY OF THE BOYS.

To all these protests Dr. Warre had practically but one answer--that hare-hunting not being _illegal_, he could not interfere with the liberty of the boys in the matter, many of whom, he stated, are in the habit of hunting “when at home in the holidays, and with the approval of their parents.” But this plea is at once invalidated by the fact that many things are prohibited to schoolboys which may (or may not) be permitted to them at home, and which are not in themselves illegal. Some of the elder boys, for example, smoke when at home in the holidays, and with the approval of their parents; yet if these young gentlemen, relying on Dr. Warre’s argument, had started a smoking-club at Eton, he would not have hesitated to interfere very promptly with their freedom. Why, then, should an excuse which is not nearly good enough to justify a smoking-club be seriously put forward by the headmaster of a great public school when a cruelty-club is in question?

On one point only would Dr. Warre make any concession--viz., with regard to the reports that appeared in the _Eton College Chronicle_ of the “breaking up” of hares and the “blooding” of hounds. “The phrases in question,” he said, “are among those current in sporting papers, and I regret that they should have found their way into the pages of the _Eton College Chronicle_, being objectionable in sound, and liable to misinterpretation. I understand, however, that these phrases do not imply anything more than that the dead hare is devoured by the hounds.” This led to a pertinent inquiry in the press, whether the Eton boys were in the habit of hunting “a dead hare.” The cruelty of the sport obviously consists less in the actual killing of the hunted animal than in the prolonged torture of the hunt that precedes the death--the “bustling” which, as we have seen in the extracts from the _Eton College Chronicle_, often renders the panic-stricken little animal “dead beat,” “absolutely stiff,” “so done that it cannot stand.” And, really, if the boys are encouraged to _do_ this thing, it is a somewhat dubious morality which is content with forbidding them to _speak_ of it! “Objectionable in sound” such practices are, beyond question; but are they not also somewhat objectionable in fact?

Thus, while on the one side Dr. Warre hardened his heart and would not lay a sacrilegious finger on the time-honoured institution which had been forbidden in the Statutes of the Founder, humanitarian feeling, on the other side, became more and more aroused, and memorial after memorial was presented to the Eton authorities, suggesting that, “as there is now an increasing tendency among teachers to inculcate a more sympathetic regard for animals, it is desirable that Eton College should no longer stand aloof from this humane spirit.” It is significant of the growth of public opinion on this subject that, whereas, some twenty years ago, the very existence of the Eton Hunt was unknown to many except Etonians, we now find among the signatures appended from time to time to these memorials such diverse names as those of Mr. Herbert Spencer, Archbishop Temple, the Bishops of Durham, Ely, and Newcastle, Dr. Clifford, Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Sir A. Conan Doyle, Sir John Gorst, Sir Frederick Treves, and Lord Wolseley, also a number of heads of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, the headmasters of numerous grammar schools and training colleges, officials of the branches of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and many distinguished clergy and laymen, representative of almost every shade of opinion.[23]

When it was known that Mr. Lyttelton was to be Dr. Warre’s successor in the headmastership of Eton, it was thought probable that his notorious humanitarian sympathies would lead him to the desired reform; but these expectations proved to be too sanguine. The immense stability of an “old institution,” in so conservative a stronghold as Eton, is a fact that must be reckoned with; for Eton is not like Rugby, where a reforming headmaster might venture, as Dr. Arnold did, to sweep away at a stroke an ancient sporting custom which had nothing but its age to recommend it. We all know the passage in “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”--the speech of “old Brooke”--where Arnold’s abolition of the Rugby Beagles is incidentally referred to:

“A lot of you think and say, for I’ve heard you, ‘There’s this
new doctor hasn’t been here so long as some of us, and he’s
changing all the old customs.…’ But come, now, any of you, name
a custom that he has put down.

“‘The hounds,’ calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green
cutaway, with brass buttons, and cord trousers, the leader of
the sporting interest.

“Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles, I’ll
allow, and had had them for years, and the doctor put them
down. But what good ever came of them? Only rows with all the
keepers for ten miles round; and big-side Hare and Hounds is
better fun ten times over.”

If we compare this passage with the report of Mr. Lyttelton’s address to the Eton boys at the commencement of his headmastership, in which he frankly avowed his own “strong opinions” on the subject of the hare-hunt, but added that he did not hold these views in his boyhood, and did not see why he should force them on the boys, we see the difference, not so much between an Arnold and a Lyttelton, as between a Rugby and an Eton. It is doubtful if even an Arnold could have safely flouted Etonian susceptibilities in this matter of worrying hares with hounds. The reason given by Mr. Lyttelton for allowing the hare-hunt to continue is that all legislation which outstrips “public opinion” is injurious and unwise, by which he presumably means the “public opinion” of Eton itself--for it is certain enough that public opinion outside Eton would bear the disappearance of the hare-hunt with equanimity--and undoubtedly Eton opinion, to those who dwell under the shadow of the “antique towers,” is a matter of serious consideration, however medieval it may be. It is a curious fact that the large majority of Etonians, though nowadays a bit ashamed of the ram-hunt and other sporting pleasantries of a bygone period, do not in the least suspect that their beloved hare-hunt belongs in effect to the same category of amusement. Thus, Sir H. Maxwell Lyte, in his history of the school, referring to the earlier barbarities, remarks that “it is evident that in the time of Elizabeth cruelty to animals was not counted among the sins for which penitents require to be shriven.” But what, it may be asked, of the time of George V.? It is entertaining to find the _Eton College Chronicle_ itself referring to the ram-hunt of the eighteenth century as a “brutal custom,” and remarking that Etonians were “once so barbarous.” Once!

MORAL INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG.

The value of the moral instruction given at Eton, as far as the duties of mankind towards the lower races are concerned, may be estimated from the following sentiment of an Eton boy, quoted from a letter of dignified remonstrance addressed to the interfering humanitarians: “A hare is a useless animal, you must own, and the only use to be made of it is for the exercise of human beings.” It will be seen that Etonian philosophy is still decidedly in the anthropocentric stage. It is not easy, even for the most progressively minded headmaster, to make any immediate impression on such dense and colossal prejudice.

But let us at least take courage from the fact that the ram-hunt is no more, that the college cook no longer hangs up a live crow to be pelted to death on Shrove Tuesday, and that the Eton boys are not now invited to indulge in the manly sports of bull-baiting, dog-fighting, and cat-hunts. These recreations have gone, never to return, and it is equally certain that, sooner or later, the hare-hunt will also have to go. It is not to be supposed that Mr. Lyttelton, who is keenly alive to the best and most humane tendencies of the age, is insensible to the discredit which Eton incurs by thus prolonging into the twentieth century a piece of savagery which Rugby, Harrow, and the other great public schools have long outgrown and abandoned; or that he does not feel the sting of Mr. W. J. Stillman’s remark that “the permission given to the boys of Eton to begin their education in brutality, when they ought to be learning to say their prayers, is the crowning disgrace of all the educational abuses of a nation which instituted the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

To those, of course, who regard blood-sports as not only a proper pastime for men, but a desirable recreation for schoolboys, and a fit form of training for military service, the whole protest against the Eton hare-hunts must needs seem ridiculous; but even these thoroughgoing sportsmen will have to admit that the trend of public opinion is against them, else why does Eton now stand alone among public schools in this matter? If the reasoning of the Etonian apologists be sound, the _absence_ of Beagles at Rugby, Harrow, and the other great schools, is a glaring defect in their system which ought speedily to be remedied; yet we have not heard that any enthusiast has gone so far as to suggest that the schools which have long since abandoned hare-hunting should now make a return to it, and short of this complete approval of the sport the excuses put forward on its behalf are about as feeble as could be imagined.

It cannot, for instance, be seriously argued that boys whose studies are notoriously endangered by the very numerous athletic exercises--cricket, rowing, football, fives, racquets, running, etc.--in which they are able to indulge, are in need of yet another pastime in the form of hunting hares. Granted that it would be inadvisable for the school authorities to preach advanced humanitarian doctrines to boys whose family traditions and prejudices they are bound to consider, still, it is not necessary to go to the other extreme of encouraging them in familiarity with sights and scenes which must tend to deaden the sense of compassion. From the moral standpoint, blood-sports cannot be regarded in quite the same light as athletic exercises; and there are many persons nowadays who, without raising the question of the morality of field sports for adults, think that the license given to young boys to spend their half-holidays in the “breaking up” of hares is as great a stain on the English public-school system as any of the admitted “immoralities” by which that system is undermined.

There is, in the opinion of humanitarians, a grave inconsistency between the insistence of preachers and teachers on the duty of kindness and consideration, and the sanction accorded by the school authorities to practices the very reverse of these. Unconsciously, perhaps, but none the less surely, the youthful minds which are trained under such influences are affected in their turn, and learn to conform superficially to maxims of piety and honour, while practically in their own lives they are setting those virtues at defiance.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] It should not be forgotten that hare-hunting is also carried on by our naval cadets. Here is an extract from the _Naval and Military Record_ of March 1, 1906, describing a run with the Dartmouth (“Britannia”) Beagles: “Just outside the covert a hare was moved in the ploughing by hounds, and gave a most exciting chase around two fields, and when killed was found to have only three legs.” A fine sport for our future naval officers!

[23] It is also worthy of note that a memorial against the Dartmouth Beagles, presented to the First Lord of the Admiralty by the Humanitarian League in 1907, was signed by no fewer than twenty-five headmasters of public schools. As a result of the League’s protests, the grant of public money for the maintenance of this sport was withdrawn.

SPORTSMEN’S FALLACIES

BY HENRY S. SALT

Everyone knows the old story of the Wildgrave, that spectral huntsman who, for the wrongs done by him in the past to his suffering fellow-creatures, was doomed to provide nightly sport for a troop of ghostly pursuers.

“The Wildgrave flies o’er bush and thorn,
With many a shriek of helpless woe;
Behind him hound, and horse, and horn,
And ‘Hark away!’ and ‘Holla ho!’”

If we may judge by the signs of the times, a similar fate has now overtaken the modern sportsman, who finds to his dismay that his proud vocation no longer goes unchallenged, but that he is compelled to stand on his defence before the force of ethical opinion, and to play the part less of the pursuer than of the pursued. Nowadays it is the humanitarians who, in the intellectual discussion of sport, derive keen enjoyment from the “pleasures of the chase,” and having “broken up” the Royal Buckhounds after a ten years’ run, are hunting the sportsman from cover to cover, from argument to argument.

The sportsman, in fact, is now himself standing “at bay”; and it may be worth while to consider what value, if any, attaches to the excuses commonly put forward by him in justification of his favourite pastime. On what moral grounds are we asked to approve, in this twentieth century, such seemingly barbarous practices as the hunting to death of stags, foxes, and hares; the worrying of otters and rabbits; or the shooting of vast numbers of game birds in the battue? The hunted fox, as we know, has many wily resources for throwing his pursuers off the scent. What are the corresponding shifts and wiles of the hunted sportsman?[24]

THE APPEAL TO “NATURE.”

The first, perhaps, that demands notice is the frequent appeal to “Nature,” and even (when the hunter happens to be a man of marked piety) to the savage instincts which “the Creator,” it is assumed, has implanted. “Were not otter hounds created to hunt and kill otters?” asked a devout correspondent of the _Newcastle Daily Journal_. “Therefore,” he continued, “let me ask these persons (the opponents of sport) what right they have to place their own peculiar faddism against the wisdom of the Creator?” In like manner a distinguished hunter of big game, Mr. H. W. Seton-Karr, has defended himself as follows in the _Daily Chronicle_:

“If a person experiences pleasure in the chase, such as in
fox-hunting or deer-stalking, or even in lion-hunting, the
rights and wrongs of that natural instinct are a personal
matter between that man and his God. That, in common with all
carnivorous creatures, we do possess God-planted instincts of
the chase is a fact. Why did Almighty God create lions to prey
nightly on harmless animals? And should we not, even at the
expense of a donkey as a bait, be justified in reducing their
number, sacrificing one for the good of many?”

The answer to all this pious verbiage is, of course, very simple. In view of the fact that the sportsman of the present day professes to be _civilised_, and is at any rate nominally a member of a civilised State, it is quite irrelevant to plead that the propensity to hunt is natural to the _savage_ man. We are continually striving in other departments of life to get rid of ferocious instincts, an inheritance from a savage past, which may or may not be “God-planted,” but are certainly very much out of place in a society which regards itself as humane. Why, then, should it be assumed that an exception is to be made in favour of the hunting instinct? The charge against modern blood-sports is that they are an anachronism, a survival of a barbarous habit into a civilised age; nor can it possibly be any justification of them to show that Nature herself is cruel, for as we do not make savage Nature our exemplar in other respects, there is no reason why we should do so in this. And as for the statement that a man’s treatment of the lower animals is a “personal” affair “between that man and his God,” it can only provoke a smile. For man is a social being, and not even the sportsman, belated barbarian though he may be, can be allowed the privilege of thus evading the responsibility which he owes to his fellow-citizens in a matter affecting the common conscience of the race.

But the wild animals, it is argued, put themselves outside the pale of consideration because they prey on one another. One searches in vain for justice and mercy among the lower animals--such is the strange reason advanced as an excuse for showing no justice or mercy to _them_.[25] But, in the first place, it is not a fact that these qualities are non-existent in the lower races, where co-operation is as much a law of life as competition; and, secondly, if it were a fact, it would have no bearing whatever on the morality of sport. For why should we base human ethics on animal conduct? Still more, why should we imitate the predatory animals rather than the sociable? And finally, why, because some animals kill for food, should _we_ kill for pleasure? The cruelty of Nature can afford no possible justification for the cruelty of Man, for, as Leigh Hunt wrote in that trenchant couplet which may be commended to the notice of the sportsman--

“That there is pain and evil is no rule
That I should make it greater, like a fool.”

Next we come to the kindred sophism drawn from “the necessity of taking life.” To kill, we are reminded, is unavoidable; for wild animals must be “kept down,” or the balance of Nature would be deranged. That, of course, is undeniable; but, unfortunately for the sportsman’s argument, it is a fact that the breed of foxes, rabbits, pheasants, and other victims of sport, is artificially kept up, not down, in order that there may be plenty of hunting and shooting for the idle classes to amuse themselves with. So far from securing the effective destruction of noxious animals, sport indirectly prevents it; more than that, it causes the killing to be done not only ineffectively, but in the most demoralising way, by making a pastime out of what, if done at all, should be done as a disagreeable duty. But here we must in justice mention a new and ingenious excuse for blood-sports which (to add to its zest) was put forward by a clergyman. It is necessary to take life, he argued, and what is necessary is a duty, and it is right, as far as possible, to make a pleasure of one’s duties, and therefore--but the conclusion is plain! Presumably the reverend gentleman, had he lived a century back, would have found the same pious justification for the practice of making up pleasure parties to see felons hanged.

SPORT A BLESSING TO MEN.

Speaking generally, we may class the remaining arguments under two heads: those which aim at showing that sport is of benefit to mankind, or at least not a symptom of cruelty in the sportsman; and those which actually discover it to be a blessing to the animals themselves.[26] In the former and more prosaic category must be placed the queer assertion that sport “adds to the food-supply” of the nation. We have all read how, after some aristocratic “shoot,” a number of pheasants or other palatable game were presented to the local hospital. Sport, it is seen, goes hand in hand with the charitable and the philanthropic--truly a touching picture! But the fact remains that the cost of the animals thus reared primarily for sport, and secondarily for the table, is far in excess of their market value as food, and this at once knocks the bottom out of the sportsman’s patriotic contention. Every stag that is stalked, every pheasant that is mown down in the battue, and every hare or rabbit that is knocked over in covert-shooting, has cost the country much more to produce than it is worth when butchered; and the game-preserver, far from being helpful to the community in this respect, is a positive encumbrance to it, as wasting labour in the production of what is not a food, but a luxury. Game is reared not for the benefit of the many, but at the cost of the many, to gratify the idle and cruel instincts of the few.

Not less illusory is the plea so frequently made in sporting journals as a justification of sport, that hunting and shooting “give employment” to a large number of people. “Do these hyper-humane faddists,” asks the _Irish Field_, “ever consider how, by doing away with many of what they are pleased to call spurious sports, they would be taking the actual bread-and-butter out of the mouths of thousands of men and their families? Hunting, shooting, and other sports give employment to such a vast number of people, directly and indirectly, that it would be nothing short of a national calamity if they were discontinued for any cause.” What is really proved by such apologists is that blood-sports are a terrible drain on the resources of the nation, and that millions are annually diverted from productive labour to be employed on the silliest form of luxury--the killing of animals for the mere amusement of rich people. It is the old fallacy of supposing that _all_ expenditure of money, without regard to the nature of the commodities produced, is beneficial to the community at large.

Then there is the much-vaunted “manliness” of sport, so important a quality, we are told, in an imperial and military nation. Yet what could be more flagrantly and miserably _un_manly than for a crowd of men to sally forth, in perfect security themselves, armed or mounted, with every advantage of power and skill on their side, to do to death with dogs or guns some poor skulking, terrified little habitant of woodside or hedgerow? This is what Sir Henry Seton-Karr has to say on this point:

“Only those who have experienced it can realise the strength
of the hunter’s lust to kill the hunted, though they may find
it difficult to explain. It is certain that no race of men
possess this desire more strongly than the Anglo-Saxons.…
Let us take it that in our case this passion is an inherited
instinct--which civilisation cannot eradicate--of a virile and
dominant race, and that it forms a healthy natural antidote to
the enervating refinements of modern life.”[27]

The obvious answer to this claim is that civilisation _is_ eradicating the destructive instincts of sport--with extreme slowness, no doubt, as in the case of all barbarous inherited tendencies, but surely and certainly nevertheless; and the fact that blood-sports are already condemned by many thoughtful people is a clear indication of what verdict the future will pass on the profession of killing for “fun.” That good physical exercise is provided by field sports none will deny, but it is just as undeniable that such exercise can be as well or better provided in other ways--by the equally healthy and far more manly sports of the gymnasium and the playing-field, which, be it noted, are capable of being utilised by a much larger number of people than the privileged pastimes of the crack huntsman and “shot.” There is no reason why the mass of the population should not, under a juster social system, have leisure to derive benefit from cricket, football, boating, hockey, and the other rational sports; but it is very evident that only a very few can ever find recreation in those blood-sports which are absurdly called “national.” The rational and humane sports may be for the many; the “national” and cruel sports must be for the few: that is not the least of the striking differences that distinguish them.[28]

To contend that blood-sports have no injurious influence on the minds of those who practise them seems about as reasonable as to assert that effect does not follow cause. Yet it is frequently urged, in defence of sport, that the pleasure is found not in the “kill,” but in the chase. That may be true in a sense. What humanitarians hold is not that sportsmen derive pleasure from the _mere_ infliction of pain, but that they seek excitement without sufficient regard to the pain inflicted, and that this is apt, in some cases, to breed a positive love of killing, a real “blood-lust.” Take, for example, the following remark quoted from the _Eton College Chronicle_: “At the time we are writing, the Beagles have killed but twice, though by the time the _Chronicle_ appears they may have increased this number by one.” Here it will be seen that what the boys’ journal dwells on is precisely the killing--surely a significant side-light on the influence of the sport. There is no escaping this question, whether at Eton or elsewhere: Why, if the painful pursuit of a sentient animal be not an essential part of the amusement, is the drag-hunt refused as a substitute? And if the drag be disdained as not sufficiently exciting, how can the inference be avoided that the zest of the pastime is enhanced by the peril of the quarry?

SPORT A BLESSING TO THE ANIMALS.

But it is when he is demonstrating that sport comes as a boon and a blessing to the non-human races which are the victims of it that the sportsman is most entertaining. “They like it,” he asserts, when any pity is expressed for the hunted fox.

“Happy the hounds, loud-baying on his track!
Happy the huntsmen with their murderous call!
But the spent fox, dead-beat before the pack--
His are the sweetest, strangest joys of all!”

This love on the part of certain animals for being hunted to death is surely one of the most curious facts in natural history, and makes it seem almost an injustice to horses, cows, pigs, and other domestic creatures, that they are denied a privilege which is so freely accorded to their wilder brethren. Why should deer, for instance, be specially favoured in this respect? The stag, as a noble lord once remarked, is a most pampered animal. “When he was going to be hunted he was carried to the meet in a comfortable cart. When set down, the first thing he did was to crop the grass. When the hounds got too near, they were stopped. By-and-by he lay down, and was wheeled back to his comfortable home. It was a life that many would like to live.” It appears, therefore, that it is a loss, a deprivation, not to be hunted over a country full of barbed wire and broken bottles by a pack of stag-hounds. Life is mean and poor without it; for, to humans and non-humans alike, sport, as the same nobleman expressed it, is “the gift of God.”

But the sportsman can be very “slim” when hard pressed in controversy by his implacable pursuers, and among his many devices for confusing the issue, the most subtle, perhaps, is the metaphysical argument which pleads that it is better for the animals to be bred and killed in sport than not to be bred at all, and that it is to the “preservation” which sport affords that certain species owe their escape from extinction. Mr. R. A. Sanders, late Master of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, has thus written of the stag (_Nineteenth Century_, August, 1908):

“He has lived a life of luxury for years, and has a bad
half-hour at the end. From his point of view surely the
pleasure predominates over the pain. For if it were not for the
hunting, he would not exist at all.”

When a Bill was introduced in Parliament in 1883 for the prohibition of the cruel sport of pigeon-shooting, it was opposed by Sir Herbert Maxwell on the ground that a pigeon would rather accept life, “under the condition of his life being a short and happy one, violently terminated,” than not be brought into existence; and the same sportsman has since stated, as a “salient paradox,” that one who takes delight in pursuing and slaying wild animals may claim to rank among their best friends. It escaped his notice, as it escapes the notice of all who seek refuge in this amusing piece of sophistry, that it is beyond our power to ascertain the feelings or the preferences of a pigeon, or of any other being, _before_ he is in existence; what we have to deal with is the sentience of animals that _already_ exist.

And as for the contention that animals are “preserved” by sport, it is sufficient to point out that it rests on a mental confusion between the individual animal and the species. It would be little comfort to the individual fox who is torn to pieces by the hounds to know, if he could know, that his species is preserved by his tormentors, and that the same process of death-dealing will thus be perpetuated. When it is asserted that but for fox-hunting the fox would have been exterminated in England like the wolf, the answer of course is that of the two methods extermination is far the more merciful. Can it be pretended that it would have been kinder to wolves to keep a number of them alive in order that sportsmen might for ever pursue and break them up?

And, really, if it is so kind to animals to preserve them that they may be worried with hounds, we ought to feel some compunction at having allowed the humane old sport of bear-baiting to be abolished; for, according to the same “salient paradox,” the bear-baiter was Bruin’s best friend. It is sad to think that there used to be bears in many an English village where now they are never seen!

It is for the fox, perhaps, that the sportsman’s solicitude is most touching and most characteristic. “If we stay fox-hunting,” it has been said, “foxes will die far more brutal deaths in cruel vermin traps, until there are none left to die.” How tender, how considerate, is this disinterested regard for the welfare of the hunted animal![29] The merciful sportsman steps in to save a noxious species from extinction, and in return for such “preservation” demands that the grateful fox shall be hunted and worried and dismembered for the amusement of his gentle benefactor. But are not our fox-hunting friends just a trifle too clever in making, at one and the same time, two quite incompatible and contradictory claims for their beloved profession--first, that it saves the fox from extermination; and, secondly, that it rids the country-side of a very mischievous animal? “For six good months,” says the _Sportsman_, “he is allowed to frolic at his ease, with all his poultry-bills paid for him.” The argument here is that there can be no cruelty in fox-hunting, because the fox is preserved; but, in that case, what about the following defence of fox-hunting by the editor of the “Badminton Library”? “The sentimentalist,” he says, “does not consider those other tragedies for which the fox is responsible--the rabbits, leverets, poultry, and game birds that he devours daily. The death of a fox is indeed the salvation of much life.”

So the farmer is to be grateful to the fox-hunter because the fox is killed, and the fox himself is to be grateful to the same person because he is _not_ killed! It is obvious that the sporting folk cannot have it both ways; they cannot take credit for the destruction of a pest and also for preventing that pest being exterminated by the injured farmer. Let them choose one of the alternative arguments and keep to it.

“Hark ye, then, whose profession or pastime is killing!
To dispel your benignant illusions I’m loth;
But be one or the other, my double-faced brother--
Be saviour or slayer--you cannot be both!”

The more one considers it, one cannot but smile at the sportsman’s “love” for the animals whom he so persecutes and worries. Tom Tulliver, we remember, was described by George Eliot as “fond of animals--fond, that is, of throwing stones at them”; and so it is with this affection of the sportsman’s. “What name should we bestow,” says an old writer, “on a superior being who, without provocation or advantage, should continue from day to day, void of all pity or remorse, to torment mankind for diversion, and at the same time endeavour with the utmost care to preserve their lives and to propagate their species in order to increase the number of victims devoted to his malevolence, and be delighted in proportion to the miseries which he occasioned? I say, what name detestable enough could we find for such a being? Yet if we impartially consider the case, we must acknowledge that, with regard to the inferior animals, just such a being is the sportsman.”[30]

TRUST THE SPECIALIST.

Such, then, are the arguments which are advanced in all seriousness, and without a suspicion or twinkle of humour, to prove that blood-sports are a benefit to mankind and to the lower races alike. But before concluding I must mention one other piece of reasoning which is as amusing as any specimen of sportsman’s logic--the “trust the specialist” fallacy, which asserts that none but sportsmen can fairly pass judgment on sport. For example, when a memorial was presented to a former Prime Minister against the Royal Buckhounds, a certain paper gravely remarked that “what proportion of the protesting gentlemen had ever been on horseback, it was not easy to determine.” The assumption, it will be seen, is that when any cruel practice is arraigned before public opinion, we are not merely to trust the specialist on technical matters that rightly lie within his ken, but we are to let him decide the wider _ethical_ issues, on which, being no more than human, he is certain to have the strongest professional prejudice. It is an argument worthy of the Sublime Porte itself.

In like manner Lord Ribblesdale, when defending stag-hunting in his book on “The Queen’s Hounds,” expressed the sportsman’s case as follows: “Most people will agree that conclusions founded on practice must always have a slight pull when placed in the scales with conclusions based upon theory, hearsay, or conjecture--even granting the fullest credit for sincerity and _bona fides_ to the opponents of stag-hunting.”

Now, it is, of course, absurd to represent the ethical objections to sport as “based upon theory, hearsay, or conjecture,” for the methods of sportsmen are well known and beyond dispute, and many of those who most strongly condemn such practices have been sportsmen themselves and are thoroughly conversant with the facts. But what I wish to point out is that Lord Ribblesdale’s description of the sportsman’s defence of sport as “a conclusion founded on practice” might be just as logically applied to the criminal’s defence of crime. To invoke the judgment of an expert on the morality of a practice in which he is professionally interested is an error similar to that of setting the cat to watch the cream.

On the whole, it is not surprising that the sportsman who can devise no cleverer modes of escape from his humanitarian pursuers than the sophisms above mentioned is already being brought to bay, and stands in imminent danger of being, controversially, “broken up.” Indeed, considering the nature of the arguments adduced in its favour, one is inclined to think that sport must be not only cruel to the victims of the chase, but ruinous to the mental capacity of the gentlemen who indulge in it. It can hardly be doubted that the ludicrous aspect of modern sport will more and more present itself to those who possess the sense of humour; and we may even hope that the poverty-stricken caricaturists of our comic papers will some day relinquish their threadbare jokes over the blunders of the hunting-field and the shooting-box, to discover that the subject of sport is rich in another kind of comedy--the essential silliness of the habit itself, and the crass absurdity of the arguments put forward by its apologists.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Some of these fallacies have been incidentally referred to in preceding chapters, but it is convenient, at the expense of a little overlapping, that they should here be treated together.

[25] _Blackwood’s Magazine_, August, 1899.

[26] Both these lines of argument were followed by Dr. Lang, Archbishop of York, when on a recent occasion (November 16, 1913) he pronounced what may be called the Foxology at the dedication of a stained window to the memory of an aged blood-sportsman who was killed in the hunting-field. That a Christian minister should have been “launched into eternity,” as the phrase is, while engaged in hunting a fox, might have been expected to cause a sense of very deep pain, and even of shame, to his co-religionists. What actually happened was that an Archbishop was found willing to eulogise, in a consecrated place of worship, not only the reverend gentleman whose life was thus thrown away, but the sport of fox-hunting itself!

[27] “My Sporting Holidays,” by Sir H. Seton-Karr, 1904.

[28] But let us not forget the delightful remark of the Archbishop of York, that “even the labourer, when he felt the stir of the Meet, got just one of those fresh events, excitements, and interests that he needed in what otherwise was often a very monotonous life.”

[29] This humane aspect of sport may be aptly illustrated by a passage in De Quincey’s essay on “Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts”:

“The subject chosen ought to be in good health, for it is absolutely barbarous to murder a sick person, who is usually quite unable to bear it. And here, in this benign attention to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the feelings. From our art, as from all the other liberal arts, when thoroughly mastered, the result is to humanise the heart.”

[30] Soame Jenyns, 1782.

APPENDIX

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