CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19896, 15 March 1928, Page 12

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

Sif,—l have been interested in the con troversy about cruelty to wumals now that it has chauged its field frum'V l animals to fish I cannot restrain ; ,theiin. pulse to write showing another aspect To suggest that cruelty should be met by cruelty is utterly wrong. The perpetrator of an offence so cruel as te raise such a storm of protest is more la be t pitied than blamed, for the evils of cruelty are only to be eliminated by the the*.'! ough schooling of the present day. Cruelty after all is only by comparison and to big fish whose iiviw are, without exception, one continual truel snapping fight, a perfect orgy of fierce decimation cruelty has no place in their orbit. J think we have much to be thankful for that the present age is so much less cruel than former ages; I suppose our aesthetic ideas are gradually making anything in the way of oppression offensive. Th< is only one way to minimise cruelty and that is by reason, and the instruction r«.' ceived in the junior schools which, we can rely on, the children are already trotting. KW.C.

Sir,—The letter of Mr. S. Clair Brown, with other contributions to your columns, makes rather distressing reding, impressing the reader with the futility of the hope that human beings, frotn motives of pure compassion, will readily give up any of their sensuous enjoyments in the line of either sport or gastronomy. The protest against skinning eels aliVs used to be turned aside by the facetious retort that they are so accustomed to it that they enjoy it; so much easier is wit than compassion! To a man struggling with the difficulty of skinning a large eel on the verandah of a country public house I once demonstrated to his satisfaction the great facilitv that he would gain in his work by the simple process of giving the eel a stab in the back of its neck with a sharp penknife, thus depriving it of all sensation and motionbut I ponder what percentage of the eels that are still skinned and eaten gets the benefit of mv demonstration. The genwal callousness of the'public seems to render the camnaign against cruelty vain and useless, lint we must not give up hone, and those who are watching will. I bi* ljeVe. discern some signs Of progress. J. Otiss.