MAN’S HUMANITY TO DUMB ANIMALS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18189, 23 June 1927, Page 8

MAN’S HUMANITY TO DUMB ANIMALS.

BRITAIN SHOWS WORLD A POINT IN CULTURE. LONDON. April 24. After studying the British humanitarian movement for the best part of a year with increasing interest, I have come to the conclusion that there is a good deal more than sentiment in it, though that is the last thing its angry opponents here and on the Continent will admit (says an Australian Pressman). It is easy to be funny at the expense of the cranks which humanitarianism, like every other campaign, religious, political or social, has attracted. But the fact remains that Britain enjoys an enormous prestige abroad as the pioneer of animal protection and welfare; that humanitarianism reacts favourably on the national psychology; and that, apart from such considerations, it is good business. That Well-bred Look. Take the Royal Veterinary College. Here thousands of domestic animals belonging to the poor are treated free, or for nominal fees, every year. It represents a whole chain of institutions which combine to make the British animal the best-looking and best-tended in the world.

This is, among other things, a valuable advertisement for the pedigree live-stock industry in which the United Kingdom leads the world. Any nation which hopes to tackle Britain here will have to do as well by its domestic animals, in the judgment of those who deal in animals, and they say it is an explanation of the fact that Italy now has an active S.P.C.A. under the enthusiastic patronage of Mussolini. Harassed by Extremists.

Two main factors hamper the movement—misguided whole-hoggers, who want animals to be better treated than children, and reactionaries who would go back to bear-baiting and cock-fight-ing if they could; but, as that is impracticable, fight for the preservation of all the cruelty that now exists. In the opinion of many R.S.P.CJL members the first section does more harm than the second. They make fools and nuisances of animals in the crowded cities.

They have no toleration or discrimination, and they ask for too much. They also indulge freely in that abuse which is proverbially no argument. For many years Lord Banbury has been trying to get through Parliament a “ Dogs' Protection Bill," and now Sir Robert Gower, of the Canine Defence League, has charge of a similar measure.

Cutting up Dogs. Its object is to prevent vivisection on dogs which anti-vivisectionists describe as “ torturing dogs in a most abominable manner," though anaesthetics are used in these operations. In the opinion of the R.S.P.CA. authorities the time is not ripe for the prohibition of vivisection, hunting, shooting, etc., and perhaps never will be, and in consequence the society continually loses extremist members. Sir George Greenwood, a former member of the council, and Mr Stephen Coleridge, of the famous legal family, are two recent defections.

However, broadly speaking, the movement proceeds impressively from strength to strength. Practical humanitarians do not campaign against say, hunting, but whenever some needlessly barbarous incident cocurs the country hears from them. Incidents Cause Outcry.

When a hind was chased into the sea by the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, and killed on a quay, Thomas Hardy sent a burning message which was read at a local meeting of protest, and Eden Philpotts, Clemence Dane and others joined in the outcry which followed.

Members of a Cheshire hunt objected to incidents connected with the digging out of a fox, and the M.£\H. agreed that there were points against digging out hunted foxes.

In other directions the good work is carried on with extraordinary intensity. At Wanstead, near London, they are spending £50,000 on a war memorial to the animals that fell in France, which takes the form of an animals’ sanitarium with operating theatre. X-ray room, cook-house, etc., all complete. Money is constantly being willed to these institutions; Mrs Baillie-Weaver, the novelist, has just left a considerable part of her fortune to various animal homes and societies.

The Duchess of Hamilton is tireless in her efforts to persuade women to wear synthetic furs, as she and her daughters do. The humane killer, which was onview at Wembley, and which went later to Dunedin *(N.Z.) for exhibition is coming into general use under the aegis of the Humane Slaughtering Society, and the butchers’ objections to it grow fainter arqj fainter. Chastened Small Boys.

Judges, magistrates, schoolmasters, and representative citizens of every description assist the movement, and it is Influencing the culture of the nation to a remarkable extent. A certain amount of cruelty used to be looked for—or at least condoned, in children, and more especially in small boys.

Teachers of both sexes claim that cruelty is rare now, and that most boys reprobate it. Nothing i s more charming than the spectacle of the care lavished on animals by the poor—on other peoples’ animals, as well as their own. They were not so humane once unless history libels them. The mass effect is to make the whole of the people gentler and kindlier in other ways, which 13 perhaps why so many Continental countries have paid Britain the compliment of imitating her measures for the welfare, at any rate, of those • creatures which stand nearest to man.