"The dog, to gain his private ends,
Went mad, and bit the man,"
there has been nothing to equal the humour of this imputed wickedness.
A simple person might suppose that the lion paused to spit in poison,
or at least deliberately poisoned his teeth and claws; whereas, of
course, he merely does not clean them properly. Having to live in the
backwoods of Africa, and support himself somehow, he cannot command
the toilet requisites of Belgravia. Is not that wicked? And his
cowardice, in not standing to be shot at, is uncommonly like that of
the Boers. Why should he not avoid the enemy's fire?
In truth, it is plain that the author, as indeed he tells us, was not
describing what he saw, but repeating what he was told. His words are
not a "living picture," but, if he will allow me to say it, a bloody
blur, which no more gives an idea of the real fight than the hospital
beds give an idea of a battle. In the supreme hour of conflict, both
sides "see red," but not in that way. Neither thinks of wounds. There
seems to be no time for that. The only thought is how to kill; and in
the glad excitement the manifold details of life and all its
conventions, which seem so real in cold blood, are crumpled up like
stage properties in a conflagration; and all seems fair in war, and
all _is_ fair; and the issue lies with the God of battles, and not
with the elderly lawyers at The Hague or anywhere else.
So much the worse is it then for the lions, and so much the worse for
any man or nation found unready, unprepared. Ah, if we could only
regulate battles like law-courts, how different the world would be!
But God knows best. It somehow _must_ be better as it is.
If this Englishman or any other man would meet the lion on equal
terms, as knight met knight in the Middle Ages, I am sure there is not
a lion, young or old, in Africa, there is not a tiger in India or
Burma, that would not accept the challenge with pleasure. As the
challenged party would have the choice of weapons, and a sportsman
could not object to fair-play, we may be sure that "Nature's weapons"
would be the lion's choice, and the victory swift and certain for the
lion, even if it rained Englishmen, to say nothing of other people.
This is an old, old story. Hercules himself had to use a club and
poisoned arrows. It is by tools and co-operation that we master the
other beasts. The cats are a particularly easy conquest, as they are
bigoted individualists. But let us not add insult to injury, and call
them cowardly because they dodge us. When next our author is at
Lucerne, let him step aside into the garden there and look at
Thorwaldsen's lion, cut in the living rock, and see whether it does
not lift his thoughts above the shambles. The wounded lion he
described, according to the reviewer, was "trying to slink off."
Thorwaldsen shows what it was seeking to die in peace. Why chase and
torture him more? To get his hide? The lion-hunter, whoever he was,
although he risked his life gratuitously, was like a silly child
pulling a cat's tail and a thoughtlessly cruel child, for this big cat
was in mortal agony.
Machinery-murder, for beasts of every kind, including men, is now a
fact inevitable, and, like everything inevitable, it bears a blessing
in it, if only we submit to the will of the Almighty, and recognise
what He has brought to pass. The blessing latent in this apparent
affliction, perhaps, is that we may cease to admire the business of
slaughter; and if so, what a stream of blessings may flow from that
one.
"For ever since historian writ,
And ever since a bard could sing,
Doth each exalt with all his wit
The noble art of murdering."