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Much Cry — Little Wool on the treatment of animals:

the slaughter of animals for food . . 48

II (From the Fortnightly Review, 1915)

I set out one morning in late August, with some potted-grouse sandwiches in one pocket and a magazine in the other, for a tramp toward Causdon. I had not been in that particular part of the moor since I used to go snipe-shooting there as a boy — ^my first introduction, by the way, to sport. It was a very lovely day, almost too hot; and I never saw the carpet of the moor more exquisite — ^heather, fern, the silvery-white cotton grass, dark peat turfs, and green bogmoss, all more than customarily clear in hue under a very blue sky. I walked till two o^clock, then sat down in a little scoop of valley by a thread of stream which took its rise from an awkward-looking bog at the top. It was wonderfully quiet. A heron rose below me and flapped away; and while I was eating my potted grouse I heard the harsh cheep of a snipe, and caught sight of the twisting bird vanishing against the line of sky above the bog. "That must have been one of the bogs we used to shoot,'' I thought; and, having finished my snack of lunch, I rolled myself a cigarette, opened the magazine, and idly turned its pages. I had no serious intention of reading — the calm and silence were too seductive; but my attention became riveted by an exciting story of some man-eating lions, and I read on till I had followed the adventure to the death of the two ferocious brutes, and found my cigarette actually burning my fingers. Crushing it out against the dampish roots of the heather, I lay back with my eyes fixed on the sky, thinking of nothing.

Suddenly I became conscious that between me and that sky a leash of snipe high up were flighting and twisting, and gradually coming lower; I appeared indeed to have a sort of attraction for them. They would dash toward each other, seem to exchange ideas, and rush away again, like flies that waltz together for hours in the centre of a room. As they came lower and lower over me, I could almost swear I heard them whisper to each other with their long bills; and presently I absolutely caught what they were saying: "Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!"

Amazed at such an extraordinary violation of all the laws of nature, I began to rub my ears, when I distinctly heard the ''Go back, go back" of an old cock grouse and, turning my head cautiously, saw him perched on a heathery knob within twenty yards of where I lay. Now, I knew very well that all efforts to introduce grouse on Dartmoor have been quite unsuccessful, since for some reason connected with the quality of the heather, the nature of the soil, or the overmild dampness of the air, this king of game birds most unfortunately refuses to become domiciled there; so that I could hardly credit my senses. But suddenly I heard him also: ''Look at him ! Go back ! The ferocious brute ! Go back!" He seemed to be speaking to something just below; and there, sure enough, was the first hare I had ever seen out on the full of the moor. I have always thought a hare a jolly beast, and not infrequently felt sorry when I rolled one over; it has a way of crying like a child if not killed outright. I confess then, that in hearing it, too, whisper: "Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!" I experienced the sensation that comes over one when one has not been quite fairly treated. Just at that moment, with a warm stirring of the air, there pitched within six yards of me a magnificent old black-cock — ^the very spit of that splendid fellow I shot last season at Balnagie, whose tail my wife now wears in her hat. He was ac- C9mpanied by four gray-hens, who, settling in a semicircle, began at once: "Look at him! Look at him ! The ferocious brute ! Oh, look at him !^' At that moment I say with candour that I regretted the many times I have spared gray-hens, with the sportsmanlike desire to encourage their breed.

For several bewildered minutes after that I could not turn my eyes without seeing some bird or other alight close by me : more and more grouse, and black game, pheasants, partridges— not only the excellent English bird, but the very sporting Hungarian variety — and that unsatisfactory redlegged Frenchman which runs any distance rather than get up and give you a decent shot at him. There were woodcock, too, those twisting delights of the sportsman's heart, whose tiny wing-feather trophies have always given me a distinct sensation of achievement when pinned in the side of my shooting-cap; wood-pigeons, too, very shy and difficult, owing to the thickness of their breast feathers, and, after all, only coming under the heading "sundry"; wild duck, with their snaky dark heads, that I have shot chiefly in Canada, lurking among rushes in twilight at flighting time — a delightful sport, exciting, as the darkness grows; excellent eating, too, with red pepper and sliced oranges in oil ! Certain other sundries kept coming also; landrails, a plump, delicious little bird; green and golden plover; even one of those queer little creatures, moor-hens, that always amuse one by their quick, quiet movements, plaintive note, and quaint curiosity, though not reaUy, of course, fit to shoot, with their niggling flight and fishy flavour! Ptarmigan, too, a bird I admire very much, but have only once or twice succeeded in bringing down, shy and scarce as it is in Scotland. And, side by side, the alpha and omega of the birds to be shot in these islands, a capercailzie and a quail. I well remember shooting the latter in a turnip field in Lincolnshire — Sb scrap of a bird, the only one I ever saw in England. Apart from the pleasurable sensation at its rarity, I recollect feeling that it was almost a mercy to put the little thing out of its loneliness. It ate very well. There, too, was that loon or Northern diver that I shot with a rifle off Denman Island, as it swam about fifty yards from the shore. Handsome plumage ; I still have the mat it made. One bird only seemed to refuse to ahght, remaining up there in the sky, and uttering continually that trilling cry which makes it perhaps the most spiritual of all birds that can be eaten — I mean, of course, the curlew. I certainly never shot one. They fly, as a rule, very high and seem to have a more than natural distrust of the human being. This curlew — ah ! and a blue rock (I have always despised pigeon-shooting) — ^were the only two winged creatures one can shoot for sport in this country that did not come and sit round me-.

There must have been, I should say, as many hundred altogether as I have killed in my time — a tremendous number. They sat in a sort of ring, moving their beaks from side to side, just as I have seen penguins doing on the films that explorers bring back from the Antarctic; and all the time repeating to each other those amazing words: "Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!''

Then, to my increased astonishment, I saw behind the circles of the birds a number of other animals besides the hare. At least five kinds of deer — ^the red, the fallow, the roe, the common deer, whose name IVe forgotten, which one finds in Vancouver Island, and the South African springbok, that swarm in from the Karoo at certain seasons, among which I had that happy week once in Namaqualand, shooting them from horseback after a gallop to cut them off — ^very good eating as camp fare goes, and making nice rugs if you sew their skins together. There, too, was the hyena I missed, probably not altogether; but he got off, to my chagrin — queer-looking brute ! Rabbits, of course, had come — ^hundreds and hundreds of them. K — ^like everybody else — I've done such a lot of it, I can't honestly say I've ever cared much for shooting rabbits, though the effect is neat enough when you get them just right, and they turn head over heels— and, anyway, the prolific little brutes have to be kept down. There, too, actually was my wild ostrich — ^the one I galloped so hard after, letting off my Winchester at half a mile, only to see him vanish over the horizon. Next him was the bear whose lair I came across at the Nanaimo Lakes. How I did lurk about to get that fellow! And, by Jove ! close to him, two cougars. I never got a shot at them, never even saw one of the brutes all the time I was camping in Vancouver Island, where they lie flat along the branches over your head, waiting to get a chance at deer, sheep, dog, pig, or anything handy. But they had come now sure enough, glaring at me with their greenish cats' eyes — ^powerful-looking creatures! And next them sat a little meerkat — ^not much larger than a weasel — ^without its head ! Ah, yes ! — that trial shot, as we trekked out from Rous's farm, and I wanted to try the little new rifle I had borrowed. It was sitting over its hole fully seventy yards from the wagon, quite unconscious of danger. I just took aim and pulled; and there it was, without its head, fallen across its hole.

I remember well how pleased our 'boys' were. And I, too ! Not a bad little rifle, that !

Outside the ring of beasts I could see foxes moving, not mixing with the stationary creatures, as if afraid of suggesting that I had shot them, instead of being present at their deaths in the proper fashion. One, quite a cub, kept limping round on three legs — ^the one, no doubt, whose pad was given me, out cubbing, as a boy. I put that wretched pad in my hat-box, and forgot it, so that I was compelled to throw the whole stinking show away. There were quite a lot of grown foxes; it certainly showed delicacy on their part, not sitting down with the others. There was really a tremendous crowd of creatures altogether by this time ! I should think every beast and bird I ever shot or even had a chance of killing must have been there, and all whispering: ''Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!"

Animal-lover, as every true sportsman is, those words hurt me. If there is one thing on which we sportsmen pride ourselves, and legitimately, it is a humane feeling toward all furred and feathered creatures — and, as every one knows, we are foremost in all efforts to diminish their unnecessary sufferings.

The corroboree about me which they were ob- 40 viously holding became, as I grew used to their manner of talking, increasingly audible. But it was the quail's words that I first distinguished.

"He certainly ate me," he said; "said I was good, too!"

"I do not believe" — ^this was the first hare speaking — "that he shot me for that reason; he did shoot me, and I was jugged, but he wouldn't touch me. And the same day he shot eleven brace of partridges, didn't he?" Twenty-two partridges assented. "And he only ate two of you, all told — that proves he didn't want us for food."

The hare's words had given me relief, for I somehow dislike intensely the gluttonous notion conveyed by the quail that I shot merely in order to devour the result. Any one with the faintest instincts of a sportsman will bear me out in this.

When the hare had spoken there was a murmur all round. I could not at first make out its significance, till I heard one of the cougars say: "We kill only when we want to eat;" and the bear, who, I noticed, was a lady, added: "No bear kills anything she cannot devour;" and, quite clear, I caught the quacking words of a wild duck: "We eat every worm we catch, and we'd eat more if we could get them." Then again from the whole throng came that shivering whisper: "Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him ! "

In spite of their numbers, they seemed afraid of me, seemed actually to hold me in a kind of horror — ^me, an animal-lover, and without a gun ! I felt it bitterly. "How is it," I thought, "that not one of them seems to have an inkling of what it means to be a sportsman, not one of them seems to comprehend the instinct which makes one love sport just for the — er — danger of it?" The hare spoke again:

"Foxes," it murmured, "kill for the love of killing. Man is a kind of fox." A violent dissent at once rose from the foxes, till one of thehi, who seemed the eldest, said: "We certainly kill as much as we can, but we should always carry it all off and eat it, if man gave us time — the ferocious brutes ! " You cannot expect much of foxes, but it struck me as especially foxy that he should put the wanton character of his destructiveness off on man, especially when he must have known how carefully we preserve the fox, in the best interests of sport. A pheasant ejaculated shrilly: "He killed sixty of us one day to his own gun, and went off that same evening without eating even a wing!" And again came that shivering whisper: "Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!" It was too absurd! As if they could not realise that a sportsman shoots almost entirely for the mouths of others. But I checked myself remembering that altruism is a purely human attribute. "They get a big price for us!" said a woodcock, "especially if they shoot us early. I fetched several shillings.'' Really, the ignorance of these birds ! As if modern sportsmen knew anything of what happens after a day's shooting! All that is left to the butler and the keeper. Beaters, of course, and cartridges must be paid for, to say nothing of the sin of waste. "I would not think them so much worse than foxes," said a rabbit, "if they didn't often hurt you, so that you take hours dying. I was seven hours dying in great agony, and one of my brothers was twelve. Weren't you, brother?" A second rabbit nodded. "But perhaps that's better than trapping," he said. "Remember mother!" "Ah!" a partridge muttered, "foxes at all events do bite your head off clean. But men often break your wing, or your leg, and leave you!" And again that shivering whisper rose: "Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!"

By this time the whole thing was getting so on my nerves that if I could have risen I should have rushed at them, but a weight as of lead seemed to bind me to the ground, and all I could do was to thank God that they did not seem to know of my condition; for, though there were no man-eaters among them, I could not tell what they might do if they realised that I was helpless — the sentiments of chivalry and generosity being confined to man, as we all know.

"Yes," said the capercailzie slowly, "I am a shy bird, and was often shot at before this one got me; and though I'm strong, my size is so against me that I always took a pellet or two away with me; and what can you do then? Those ferocious brutes take the shot out of their faces and hands when they shoot each other by mistake — IVe seen 'em; but we have no chance to do that." A snipe said shrilly: "What I object to is that he doesn't eat us till he's had too much already. I come in on toast at the fifth course; it hurts one's feelings."

"Ferocious brute, killing everything he sees." I felt my blood fairly boil, and longed to cry out: "You beasts ! You know that we don't kill everything we see! We leave that to cockneys, and foreigners.'^ But just as I had no power of movement, so I seemed to have no power of speech. And suddenly a little voice, high up over me, piped down: "They never shoot us larks." I have always loved the lark; how grateful I felt to that little creature — till it added: "They do worse; they take and shut us up in little traps of wire till we pine away ! Ferocious brutes ! " In all my life I think I never was more disappointed ! The second cougar spoke: "He once passed within spring of me. What do you say, friends; shall we go for him?" The shivering answer came from aU: "Go for him! Ferocious brute! Oh, go for him !" And I heard the sound of hundreds of soft wings and pads ruffling and shuffling. And, knowing that I had no power to move an inch, I shut my eyes. Lying there motionless, as a beetle that shams dead, I felt them creeping, creeping, tiU all round me and over me was the sound of nostrils sniffing; and every second I expected to feel' the nip of teeth and beaks in the fleshy parts of me. But nothing came, and with an effort I reopened my eyes. There they were, hideously close, with an expression on their faces that I could not read; a sort of wry look, every nose and beak turned a little to one side. And suddenly I heard the old fox saying: "It's impossible, with a smeU like that; we could never eat him !'' From every one of them came a sort of sniff or sneeze as of disgust, and as they began to back away I distinctly heard the hyena mutter: "He's not wholesome — not wholesome — the ferocious brute!"

The relief of that moment was swamped by my 45 natural indignation that these impudent birds and beasts should presume to think that I, a British sportsman, would not be good to eat. Then that beastly hyena added: "If we killed him, you know, and buried him for a few days, he might be tolerable."

An old cock grouse called out at once: "Go back ! Let us hang him ! We are always well hung. They like us a little decayed — ^ferocious brutes ! Go back !" And once more, I felt, from the stir and shuffle, that my fate hung in the balance; and I shut my eyes again, lest they might be tempted to begin on them. Then, to my infinite relief, I heard the cougar — ^have we not always been told that they were the friends of man? — ^mutter: "Pah! It's clear we could never eat him fresh, and what we do not eat at once, we do not touch!''

All the birds cried out in chorus: "No! That would be crow's work." And again I felt that I was saved. Then, to my horror, that infernal loon shrieked: "Kill him and have him stuffed — specimen of Ferocious Brute ! Or fix his skin on a tree, and look at it — as he did with me !"

For a full minute I could feel the currents of opinion swaying over me, at this infamous proposal; then the old black-cock, the one whose tail is in my wife's hat, said sharply: "Specimen !

He's not good enough!'^ And, once more, for all my indignation at that gratuitous insult, I breathed freely.

"Come!" said the lady bear quietly. "Let us dribble on him a little, and go. The ferocious brute is not worth more!" And, during what seemed to me an eternity, one by one they came up, deposited on me a little saliva, looking into my eyes the while with a sort of horror and contempt, then vanished on the moor. The last to come up was the little meerkat without its head. It stood there; it could neither look at me nor drop saliva, but somehow it contrived to say: "I forgive you, ferocious brute, but I was very happy!" Then it, too, withdrew. And from aU around, out of invisible presences in the air and the heather, came once more the shivering whisper: "Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him !"

I sat up. There was a trilling sound in my ears. Above me in the blue a curlew was passing, uttering its cry. Ah! Thank heaven! I had been asleep ! My day-dream had been caused by the potted grouse, and the pressure of the Review, which had lain, face downward, on my chest, open at the page where I had been reading about the man-eating lions and the death of those ferocious brutes. It shows what tricks of disproportion little things will play with the mind when it is not under reasonable control.

And, to get the unwholesome taste of it all out of my mouth, I at once jumped up and started for home at a round pace.

Ill

THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD

(Papers in the Daily Mail, 1912)*

The thing is horrible, but it is necessary. Why, then, drag it out into the light? Why make our thoughts miserable with contemplation of horrors which must exist?

If it were true that the present methods of slaughtering animals for food in this country were necessary, if all the suffering they involve were inevitable, I should be the first to say: "Let us shut our eyes! For needless suffering — even to ourselves — is stupid.'' It is just because this particular suffering is avoidable, and easily avoidable, that one feels we must face the matter if we want to call ourselves a decent people.

I am a meat-eater — ^we are nearly all meat-

* Things have moved a little, I believe, but not nearly enough. — J.G.

eaters. Well! We cannot sit down at present to a single meal without complicity in methods that produce a large amount of preventable suffering to creatures for whom the least sensitive among us has at heart a certain friendly feeling. For, to those who say that they do not care for animals, or that animals, even domestic ones, have no rights except such as for our own advantage we accord them, let me at once reply: I do not agree, but, for the sake of argument, granted; and then conceive, if you can, a world without cattle, sheep, and pigs, and tell me honestly whether you do not miss something friendly. No ! the fact is, we, who are the descendants of countless generations to whom these animals have been literally the breath of life, cannot — even now that we have become such highly civilised townsmen — disclaim all sensibility in their regard.

Consider the magnitude of this matter. The calculations of an expert give the following approximate numbers of animals annually killed for food in England and Wales: 1,850,000 beasts, 8,500,000 sheep, and 3,200,000 pigs. These figures are hard to come at, and may be a million or so out, one way or the other, but even if they be, is there any feature of the national life which can touch this for possibilities of preventable physical suffering? And is there any department so neglected by public opinion and the law?

Save the eating of bread, have we any practice in our lives so consistent as that of eating meat, or any from which we, perhaps wrongly, consider that we derive more benefit, or any about whose conditions, sanitary or humane, we are so careless?

If a donkey is beaten to death, a dog stoned, or a cat killed with a riding-whip, the chances are that a prosecution will ensue or a question be asked in Parliament; for public opinion and the law lay it down that the infliction of unnecessary suffering on animals is cruelty, an offence pmiishable by fine or imprisonment. But if in slaughter-houses some 8,000,000 sheep are killed yearly without first being stunned, by a method which, even in the hands of an expert, produces some seconds of acute suffering (Report of the Admiralty Committee on Humane Slaughtering of Animals, 1904); if thousands of cattle require two or more blows of that primitive instrument, the poleaxe (if even only one in a hundred cattle requires a second blow it means 18,000 in a year) ; if pigs are driven in gangs into a small space and there killed, one by one, with the others squealing in terror round their dead bodies; if aU this preventable suffering is inflicted daily in our slaughter-houses, what does public opinion know of it, and what does the law care ?

There was a time in this country when men beat their donkeys, set cocks fighting, baited bears and badgers, tied tin pots to dogs' tails, with the lightest of light hearts and no consciousness at all that they were outside the pale of decency in doing so. We, their descendants, now look on the unnecessary suffering involved in such doings with aversion, but we still allow our sheep and pigs to be killed without stunning, our pigs to be driven in gangs into the slaughtering-chamber, and the uncertain poleaxe to be used for cattle — all without a qualm.

Why should this enormous field, wherein does occur such an amount of easily preventable suffering, be left so unpatroUed by the law, which has interested itself in warding off all needless suffering from cats and dogs and horses? Well! The law stands idle partly because the animals we kill for food are not so near and dear to us as those others. We should never stand the horses and dogs and cats we make such pets of being killed when their time comes in the manner in which we kill our sheep and pigs. And partly the law stands idle because in the case of horses and dogs and cats there is no large leagued interest, such as that of the meat trades, unconvinced of the need for improvement.

I am told that the meat trades constitute the strongest body in the kingdom. And well they may, considering the vast proportions of their business. The meat trades are controlled by men like ourselves; as humane, and imdesirous of inflicting unnecessary suffering; surely they will reconsider their convictions and accept such simple, elementary safeguards against unnecessary suffering as were outlined by the Admiralty Committee on Himiane Slaughtering, of 1904. There is nothing really prejudicial to their interest in these suggestions. Nothing extravagant, or experimental. The case has been proved up to the hilt. What is the good of appointing a Governmental Committee of first-rate men* to examine into facts if their Report is to be paid about as much attention to as one would pay to the suggestions of seven lunatics? Why set going a laborious inquiry, for negligible or puny results? It can no longer be pretended that humane killers are not effective, in the face of so much evidence from abroad; in the face of numerous testimonials from butchers in this country; in the face of the fact that Mr. Christopher Cash (for whose consistent advocacy of humane slaughtering the thanks of us all are due) in the year 1910

* The Admiralty Committee on Humane Slaughtering, 1904. Chairman, Mr. Arthur Lee, M. P.

had 4,000 animals, the property of thirty butchers, killed by ^humane' methods, and though he was in every case willing to pay full compensation for any injury he might do to a carcass, had not one single claim made on him. (From a pamphlet entitled, "The Humane Slaughtering of Animals for Food,'' by Christopher Cash. Issued by the R. S. P. C. A.)

Butchers and slaughtermen perform a necessary task from which most of us would shrink, and it is both imbecoming and nonsensical to suggest intentional cruelty on their part. / do not for a moment. But I do say that it is the business of the law so to control the methods of slaughter as to obviate, to the utmost, all needless suffering, however unintentionally it may be inflicted.

In the following brief summary of our want of system, I am not dealing at all with the Jewish method of killing, for, not being a Jew, I cannot pretend to be qualified to discuss a custom which appears to have been necessary hitherto to the peace of the Jewish mind. I only urge a people in some respects more humane than ourselves, to search their consciences, and see if they can still endure this method. Neither am I speaking as to Scotland, which is ahead of us, having provided by the Burgh PoHce Act of 1892 that where there are public there shall be no private slaughter-houses; and where — at all events in Edinburgh — ^they have abattoirs that compare, I am told; with the best on the Continent.

The following is a rough outline of what at present seems good to a nation which prides itself on being at once the most practical and the most humane in the whole world: