WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 216, 8 June 1926, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM (By T.D.H.) Mrs. Sarah Martha Grove-Grady, the dear old lady whose will has created such a hubbub at the annual meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals as recorded in a message yesterday, probably created even a more intense hubbub among her relatives by her bequests. She died last November, leaving an estate of £608,000, accumulated mainly by the activities of her ancestors in the Yorkshire woollen trade. Of this handsome fortune her relatives received a little over £30,000, her sen-ants about £lO,OOO, and various amounts go to found a society to be known as “the Beaumont Animals Benevolent Society.’* —Mrs. Grove-Gradv was born in Beaumont—and all the members of the committee and governing body of which are to be anti-vivisectionists and opposed to all sports involving the pursuit or death of animals, birds, or fish. This society is to acquire land either on an island or islands or on the mainland for the purpose of providing “a refuge or refuges for the preservation of all animals, birds, or other creatures not human.” After all a good deal of the money will go to numans; for the British Treasury will lift about £210,000 of Mrs. Grove-Gradv’s fortune in estate duties. It is estimated that the Beaumont Animals Benevolent Society will start operations with about £350,000 in hand.

The R.S.P.C.A. rumpus reported yesterday was . caused through the council of the society in January last refusing to apply for a legacy of £lO,OOO left, to it by Mrs. Grove-Grady on condition that the chairman and members of committees should be anti-vivisectionists and opposed to sports involving the pursuit or death of deer, fox, hare, rabbit, bird, fish, or any other animal, and should, use every means to abolish such sports. The council decided that it could not push off its official list - the King, the Prince of Wales, and most of the other persons now holding office in order to secure the good lady’s ten thousand pounds, nor could it bind the society in future.

The terms of this interesting bequest raise the question of what constitutes cruelty to animals. The British people pride themselves upon being a nation of sportsmen, but they have always been strong on humane sport. Even in the barbarous days of three hundred years ago did not Sir Isaac Walton advise the angler in putting the worm upon his hook t<3 “use him as though you loved him, tliat is, harm him as little as you may possibly that he may live the longer”? Still even the tenderness to the worm had to be tempered with reason, for when in 1809 Lord Erskine introduced a Bill in the House of Lords to prevent wanton and malicious cruelty to animals, the “Edinburgh Review” tartly reminded this cranky nobleman tliat “no reason can be assigned for the interference of legislation in the piotection of animals unless their protection be connected either directly or indirectly with advantage to man.” Lord Erskine’s Bill Paas liament threw out as a sentimental measure putting unnecessary restrictions on the public by interfering with bull-bait-ing or other manly sports which had made the great British race what it was.

Why do we catch cold ? We came' across an article on this subject, by a physician the other day, in which It is explained that: “The deeply rooted popular belief that colds and catarrhs are directly due to a damp, chilly climate is false. Arctic explorers never catch colds, even during the most inclement weather, until they open up baggage that has been collecting germladen dust since it was stored at their port of departure. Only,when this dust is added to the air breathed do colds, catarrhs, and influenza become rampant.” ... Is the moral of this advice that it is a great mistake to disturb the dust during the winter months?

Nearly everybody to-day accepts tbe principles of the R.S.P.C.A., which a century back seemed to the public to be crankily sentimental, but are we ever going to move on to accepting Mrs Grove-O’Grady’s principles of kind" ness and give up killing animals for amusement? The Hou. Stephen Coleridge, who has long been prominent in the anti-vivisection movement, was reported as championing the GroveGrady ideas at the meeting of the R.S.P.C.A. A few years ago Mr. Coleridge proposed and . carried at a crowded’meeting of subscribers to the RJS.P.C.A. a resolution in favour of the preparation of a Bill prohibiting otter-hunting, but he added sdurly in writing of the event, “the stone images ranged along the council table of the society declined to obey the mandate of the subscribers, whose servants they should be.” * *

How kind ought humanity to be to animals? People like Mr. Bernard Shaw go further even than Mrs. Grove-Gradv or Mr. Coleridge. Not only abhorring brutal sports involving the killing of animals, Mr. Shaw has long expressed his detestation of humanity pulling the dead bodies of animals to bits and cramming them inside itself. Says Mr. Shaw: Tlie enormity of eating the scorched corpses of animals—cannibalism with its heroic dish omitted —becomes impossible the moment it becomes consciously instead ,of thoughtlessly habitual.”

Doing the right thing by the animals is a difficult matter. The vegetarians solve the problem by depriving only the succulent cabbage of its existence. But a cabbage, the scientists say, is a conscious organism, doubtless taking a refined pleasure in existence, and why should it be deprived of its place in'the sun to nourish the cranky ideas of a ravenous vegetarian? Perhaps the onlv true wav for humanity tj be trulv kind to the other animals will be for it to retire from the scene tp some star where existence is on a less brutal plan.

A Chicago message of May 14 states that Mr. Herman Schlee, 68 years old, picked up the cards dealt him in a pinochle game the previous evening, looked at them, smiled at his friends, and fell over dead. The hand consisted of eight aces and the shock was believed to have been too much.

, "What do you believe is the reason for your long' life, Uncle Aaron?” the reporter asked the coloured centenarian. , “Becoz I was bawn a long time back, ah guess,” said Aaron reflectively. WEED. You, weed in mv heart, Will vou listen to reason? If I let' you live, will you die at the end of a season, Not steal down into a root to waft for spring’s Insure ent growth to crowd cut everything ? I must protect the fragrant garden That l"have sown and reared in quiet Alay a gardener ever be merciful to weeds ? You thrive tin watched, Yov. have such light-winged seeds. —Marie Emilie Gilchrist, in the "Fonm.*!