Cruelty to Animals.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17938, 5 December 1923, Page 8

Cruelty to Animals.

An advertisement which the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has caused recently, to appear on our front page reminds us that life id one prohibited thing after another. We are tempted to remind the Society that its psychology is bad —that instead of lengthening tne list of thou-shalt-nots it should try what text-book moralists call the "expulsive power of " a new affection." We should certainly do so if we Knew what kind of a "new affection" would prevent ingrowing horns from hurting hapless cattle. But wo do not know that, and we fear that if wo did the remedy 'would not be useful for overheadchecked horses or for dogs, cats, birds, and fowls left over Christmas without even an ordinary dinner. Cruelty is sometimes thoughtlessness and sometimes, ignorance, but it is always and everywhere eo abhorrent that we are prepared to he prohibitionists to eradicate it. Where the young are concerned the chief hope—and it is £he only permanent hope —is education. The "Animals' Week" campaign launched by Mr J. A. Forbes, of Oamaru, and supported by most of the branches of the fci.Jt\C.A. throughout the Dominion, should be a useful stimulus to parents and teacliers who realise that man's dominion over, the animals is an abomination if it is not tempered with kindliness and pity. But for older sinners "Animals' Week" does not offer so much. The man who will not feed his dog because the dog is hungry, or rest his galled hors© because it is weary and sore, must be made to* feel his sips in the Police Court. The Society's attempt to make men moral with the aid of the policeman is one of the few attempts of the kind that ail good men will support: it will fail, of course, and would still fail if every sinner could be caught;, but it will at least give a few more hungry animals food, and a few more weary ones rest. The world is a so much better place for animals than it was before the S.P.C.A. came into being that every sign the Society gives that it is alert is a welcome sign; and it will be a so much better world still when the young haive been more thoroughly trained to kindness that we can wish nothing but good to the movement that has come out of Oamaru.