To talk of the use of hunting to-day is generally cant, like talking
of the danger of it. At the expense of what is wasted in a few years
upon foxes in England, it would be possible to exterminate the lions,
tigers, leopards, wolves, foxes, jaguars and every other big kind of
dangerous wild beasts on the face of the earth; and fewer lives need
be lost in the business than went to the building of the Forth Bridge.
The work might be done in a year or two; and in the same time, and
still more cheaply--perhaps with a positive profit--the deer and
elephants and other wild cattle might all be killed or tamed.
In Great Britain, of course, no planning would be needed. The clearing
of the game there shall all be done for fun, "like winking," as soon
as the many-headed king, the multitude, decides, if it ever does
decide, to end the Game Laws. It is in the Indian and Burman and
American and African forests, and in the plateaux of Central Asia,
that a little planning and some expense would be required, and a
little brave work need to be done. Of course, the present writer is
not advocating such a thing. He is fond of cats; and loves wild Nature
as well as Nature tamed. But let us have no cant about the business;
and recognise what humanity can do in A.D. 1910.
What men go after big cats for is, in general, amusement, just as much
as when they go to shoot pigeons; and the one kind of sport is
intrinsically, nowadays, no more dangerous than the other. Hunting
used to be a school of war; and so was archery. Both arts are equally
obsolete for any such purpose. It is only among unwarlike peoples,
like the English or the Chinese, that such a thing needs to be
mentioned. Officers who go a-hunting are not making themselves better
able to lead regiments in battle. It is well if the hunting does not
make them worse. There is nothing of military art or science to be
learned from sport. Gunpowder and chemicals and machinery have ended
that, and made hunting to-day the same kind of thing as golf, or
cricket, or any other child's play.