THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1926. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19687, 14 January 1926, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1926. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

To the fact that Dunedin is the Exhibition City is happily duo the circumstance that conferences of all descriptions are to be held here this year. Two conferences were opened yesterday, and representatives of the several societies in the Dominion for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals will meet this morning. The business on the agenda paper of this conference shows how far-reaching the activities of these societies arc, and while some of the proposals that will receive consideration may be of a nature that will disclose a difference of opinion even amongst pronounced humanitarians, the conference is not likely to have a serious difficulty in coming to a unanimous decision upon most of the questions that are to be submitted to it. It may be accepted, broadly speaking, that the mission of these societies is first of all to educate public opinion in regard to all practices which' inflict needless pain and suffering upon the brute creation, and thus to create a support for legislation that will be aimed at the suppression of the objectionable practices. Working along these lines over a period of years the societies have been mainly instrumental in effecting valuable reforms, with the result that cruelties of the commoner kind, which were perhaps thoughtlessly and ignorantly inflicted upon dumb animals, are now of comparatively rare occurrence. The public conscience has become fairly sensitive on these points, and it manifests little sympathy with the person who is guilty of cruelty to animals. A proposal, which is to be made at the conference, that the magistrates should be empowered is impose more substantial penalties than the laty now allows, has probably been dictated by a local experience of the inadequacy of the punishment in an unusually shocking case, but on the whole the community may congratulate itself upon the infrequency of the need for the prosecution of persons on charges of cruelty to animals. In isolated instances, it is to be recognised, the law of the Dominion for the protection of animals lags behind that in other parts of the Empire and it may be assumed that the conference will express a strong demand for bringing the legislation in New Zealand into conformity with that of Great Britain in the respects in which the latter is the more stringent. The question of the desirability of forming a Dominion federation of societies is to be raised. There may he advantages about sneb a proposal that do not immediately present themselves, but we should suppose that, while a co-ordina-tion of the activities of the existing societies is highly desirable, a federation is not urgently needed. The conference will be the first of the kind that has been held in New Zealand, and that fact in itself suggests that the local societies, backed by the sympathy of the public, have independently found themselves fully capable in the past of carrying on successfully the humanitarian service in which they are engaged.