ANIMAL DEFENCE LEAGUE AIDS BIRDS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6801, 3 January 1929, Page 9

ANIMAL DEFENCE LEAGUE AIDS BIRDS

NO EXCUSE SAID TO EXIST FOR USE OF FURS AND FEATHERS FOR HUMAN ADORNMENT. GENEVA. The Animal Defence League, of which the Duchess of Hamilton is the president, recently held an exhibition at Geneva, which made an eloquent appeal to all who visited it to be moro scrupulous in regard to their treatment of beasts and birds. Few people will deny that they have a duty to be kind to animals. “But a great many people, who would never treat any animal unkindly, take no trouble to find out whether what they cat or what they wear is the cause of unnecessary suffering. If they are meat eaters, they ought, if the duty of kindness means anything, tc inquire how the animals which supply them with food liavo been killed. For they can be ’ killed in a merciful way by the humane killer. If a woman wears furs, she ought to satisfy herself that they arc not taken from an animal which has been caught in a steel trap and left to perish. It n3ay be asked: Why cat meat, or wear l’urs, for it is quite possible to live as a vegetarian and to find a substitute for furs.

“But if this is a counspl of perfection,” the Animal Defence League maintains that a great deal can be done to spare animals pain. “At all events there can be no excuse for wearing the feathers of birds which are wantonly destroyed for cur adornment.

“If wo neglect these rules, wc are not only lacking in our duty to animals, but -wc lower the standard of kindness which human beings should observe in their treatment of one another. Indifference to cruelty, which we know is being practised on beasts or birds for our gratification, cannot fail to make us less sensitive to wrongdoing. altogether. This is why the Animal Defence. Society may be said to bo- doing a work for humanity as well as for animals.”