The Meat-fed Man.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13638, 4 July 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Meat-fed Man.

By " Tohunga" in Auckland " Herald." What is to be the fate of the meat-fed man, with so many earnest apostles preparing him for the passing of the redmeat, in which his soul rejoices? Will he: submit and become as the Chinaman, feasting on rice and taking boiled rat as, a tit-bit ? Or will he manufacture his food in a factory, and call some chemical compound from a man that looks like an allopathic' prescription? Or will he square his elbows out and make room for himself and: his herds and his flocks, even in the flats of tiie Hoang Ho and in the valley of the Grange? Will' lie eat meat in! Spite of Cain, the gardener, who always sets his fences up in the best pasture ground, and. would as soon kill Abel, the stockman, as dig a turnip? Or will he starve and die for want of New Zealand, mutton and the canned goods of Chicage, in a world where fltisli food becomes only possible to millionaires, and butter is ever brought forth on a lordly dish?

That sounds a' little bit funny, doesn't it, but is isn't, .really ? This is one of the problems- of the world, one of the riddles of the Spliynx which you need not eolve, because it will solve itself. To whom shall the world go—to the meateaters or to the grain-eateis? And if not to the .meat-eaters; s then good-night, England!" . • . . ' CoAing events cast .their;' shadows before, and forerunning the ..shortness of meat, the possible death-grapple for feed-ing-grounds, comes the cult 1 of the vegetarian, the dogma of ' the dietist. With meat at a penny a pound we' ail eat it, gorging on beef and mutton as our grandsires did on trapped mammoth and stranded whale; with meat at a shilling a pound, we are constantly being asked if it doesn't appear bestial to feed on dead animals, and we begin to ask our'selves whether we shouldn't be healthier and happier if we dropped pur one meal a day. Similarly, if you .notice, a cutaway bodice arou6es blushes only upon those who haven't got one, and the man who is rather good wi.h the gloves never thinks it wicked 'to put; them on. ■ Of course, it is quite possible for the last two hundred thousand years our daddies have been, making, a grave die'ic and- when—unconsciously accept-; irig the ' doctrine- of unborn ■ St.,. Paul—they ate whatever they could get if it tas'ed well, they slowly ruined their con-' stitutions and spoiled the viliritv of the race. ~ Yet it is hard to think that they would have pummelled their' way more successfully through history and through the • ethnological movements, that are behind history, and they feasted only on compots of apples and rice, and felt no inspiration when the gude-wife grumbled: "Sandy, hough's i' tli' pot!" If we examine the question impartially we can easily see that—whether our di-. gt-stive system was designed for meat or p'otatoes, apples, nets, or oatmeal—the various families of the human race race have managed to exist upon what Nature in the first place and Art in the second place chanced to provide for them. Nor can there be very much doubt that their differing characteristics have been largely resultant from-their different ■ feeding, but how? ; Theoretically the meat-eater should be brutal, the rice-eater gentle, the fruit-eater: artistic and intellectual, while the bread-eater ought' ;to bs calm and placid, and ; the root-eater plodding aid unemotional. And some-try to persuade us tha,t it is so, treating the hard ficte cf life . with - the colossal contempt of the theorist.. . ;

;It is quite true that the British meateater . will enjoy a live 'oyster, but the Japanese rice-eater takes aesthetic bites at a live and wriggling::fish. The least advanced of nations are those . who live on bananes and oranges; the world has never been more hysterical than since bread came to «veiy European table; and if the Irishman is - unemotional since Raleigh first plundered the Virginian potato

patches, what must'he have been •when Malachi wore the collar of gold? The attempt to connect moral and emotional development with the abandonment of meat-eating won't hold water. One of the distinctive features of modern times is the extraordinary advance of, humanitarian ideas among the meat-eating peoples, and one of the most unmistakable symptoms of the rice-eating Easfc is; its supreme and terrifying callousness, The courteous Japanese, .the smooth-facetl Cliinaman, the philosophical Hindoo, arft each and all capable of cold-blooded and 1 monstrous cruelty, which would sliock even an old-time Spanish Inquisitor, and which drive to a frenzy of fury every decent European who has encountered it. We are not as kindly as we ought to be, Heaven knows, and upon oiir racial shoulders are many and fearful .crimes, but the worst of our national sins and tiie- vilest of our national failings are: as white to black against the atrocities of the vaunted East. This doesn't justify meat-eating, of course, has . nothing to do with it, is as:' remote from it as the North Pole from the South, but it does teach us that raceeating isn't morality, and tht virtue doesn't result. from being crowded down to the most plentiful food. • Morality, virtue, right-living, is a thing inherent .in the nature of Man, is advanced and strengthened by everything and anything which fostens strength of ; body and strength of mind, keenness of intellect and. radiancy of soul.. Which endowments come to us by struggle and by the close companionships of a common struggle, by dangers faced and dangers shared, and by life and strength staked and risked and lost for the sake .of others..

And what has this to do with meat, and rice, will be asked? Just this: that the meat-fed man must work, and venture, and if need be fight whenever " hough's i' th' pot," in order that be and his may have their meat in due season, and may not sink to the level of the eaters of rice and rats. -He cannot feed, himself merely by denying himself, by working eighteen houre a day of eight, bv ceasing to demand of Life the joy ih living which God gave lo the very insects of the air. and surely did h'vfc filch from man His masterpiece. He must be strong to do and to dare, reckless of his life and loyal to the organisation which is the weapon of his/actions —giving to one the banded strength of tens and 1 of hundreds and of thousands, and of millior6 —who would live freely and eat well, and leave children of his I blood to live after him, in this hungry and crowded world. And the people who feel the pinch soonest, who live,best,, who care most, who fight most, readily , for their wants, evolve the great, viityies, and lay claim to the earth., . ; • Unquestioning submission, may be' .a virtue for a Chinaman or a Hindoo, but it is a crime in a Britisher. ; For ,this reason : that w© are what Ave are; because we- were ever • turbulent, thqugh loyalist of tiie loyal to our own of taw; and because we never jwt.down quietly to stew in our own fat, but' when the land grew small around us shook ourselves: and took to the w* and. grabbed more 4 ; seized it •and' grabbed it, for our flocks- and our herds, as well as for b"r ploughs and our harrows —nnd small-6ouled-is the colonist who will look the gift-horse in the mouth and condemn.tl.w pioneers who won from others. thelaj>d wherein he dwells. . . . . If we had been rice-eaters wli?!-* should we have been, and what should we bo? Delving like ants from da.wn to dark in 6ome sweltering rice-fields,.; the daring and the wilful stamped- do-nTi. by i the multitude which found that patience and dulness and helped it besf, to survive. Never would lover risk all for;his lady: never would woman hold the world well lost if but, Love smiled pn her ;■ never would poet sing heroic songs or patriots tell of freedom with order, or. Imagination whisper to firtint ntid 'fo scientist and to mechanician until v Man stole from Olympus the fire of the go<fcThese things are ours because we would" be ; meat-eaters, and because we followed the ' bold to battle for our lands .arid easily got. food rather than copy the cringe ing and the. feeble in ekintr out. by irksome and increasing .toil the narrowness of overcrowded land. And in the full'!"'* as in the past, until the whole - .world in on© State, and until one' race ground its rivals into ; dwt," wiJLba v meat in p!pnty wherewith to .breed tli9 British as long as British hearts are bold enough, and British hands strong enough to. make pasture where they want it.