natural alley in the forest, framed in like a picture by the
trees, a massive old female rhinoceros. She was facing me,
and standing half in sunshine, half in shadow. From a bush
protruded the hind-quarters of another. The distance was about
seventy yards. I at once sat down and ‘drew a bead’ upon her
chest. However, she swerved off, and the two broke away across
the forest, crash after crash, dying away in the distance,
marking their course as they receded. I followed, and once
again caught sight of the animal standing motionless behind
a bush; I fired, and the shot was followed by a couple of
short, angry snorts, the stamp of heavy feet, and an appalling
crashing which advanced and then swept round toward the left.
A shot delivered standing, from the shoulder, was followed by
two shrill squeaks, as the animal tottered a few paces and
fell over on its side; I shall not easily forget that cry, a
sound most disproportionate to the size and bulk of so large
a creature, but which I instantly recognised, from Sir Samuel
Baker’s description, as the death-cry of the rhinoceros; and
the hearing of it filled me with a hunter’s joy!”
The hunter’s joy is in the death-cry of his victim, and he glories in
the fact that he is the descendant of a line of prehistoric savages.
What more evidence can we want of the barbarity of the whole proceeding?
Or, again, take and ponder the following extract from Ex-President
Roosevelt’s recent book, “African Game Trails”:
“Right in front of me, thirty yards off, there appeared from
behind the bushes, which had first screened him from my eyes,
the tawny, galloping form of a big maneless lion. Crack! the
Winchester spoke; and as the soft-nosed bullet ploughed forward
through his flank the lion swerved so that I missed him with
the second shot; but my third bullet went through the spine
and forward into his chest. Down he came, sixty yards off,
his hind-quarters dragging, his head up, his ears back, his
jaws open, and lips drawn up in a prodigious snarl, as he
endeavoured to turn to face us. His back was broken, but of
this we could not at the moment be sure; and if it had merely
been grazed he might have recovered, and then, even though
dying, his charge might have done mischief. So Kermit, Sir
Alfred, and I fired, almost together, into his chest. His head
sank, and he died.”
Is it right, seriously speaking, that people who, by their own
admission, are still under the influence of very primitive impulses,
should be allowed to take their pleasure in this barbarous fashion
without some voice being raised on behalf of the innocent victims?
“LIVE BAIT.”
It appears that there are various ways of hunting the lion. One is to
track him to some thick part of the jungle, and having set fire to it
at one end to wait at the other with several guns until the terrified
beast rushes out and meets his fate.
Another method, which seems to us a specially dastardly one, is the
tying up of some domestic animal--donkey, bullock, or goat--as a “live
bait” for the larger carnivora, while the sportsman lies in wait,
safely concealed, to shoot the “game” or afterwards to track him out to
his lair. We read in one instance as follows:
“I woke up to find myself being vigorously shaken by the
watchman. A terrible struggle was going on between the donkey
and the lion, but a cloud of dust completely obscured them,
notwithstanding the brilliant light of a tropical moon. The
lion succeeded in breaking the ropes and carrying off the
struggling animal for some distance. The latter, however,
gaining his legs, emerged from the cloud of dust and made
slowly for the camp. Before he had gone many yards the lion had
got him again, and this time he killed him without giving me a
chance of aiming at all on account of the great cloud of dust.”
This practice is also mentioned in the Hon. J. Fortescue’s “Narrative
of the Visit to India of Their Majesties King George V. and Queen
Mary,” where we read:
“Overnight, or in the afternoon, bullocks are tied up in likely
places for a tiger, generally at the edge of thick jungle; and
in the morning the shikaris (or gamekeepers, as we should call
them) go round to see if any of these have been killed.”
Mr. Fortescue mentions that “the reports of the morning of December 26
set forth that, though sixty bullocks had been tethered in the jungle
on the previous night, only one had been killed.” The paucity of the
kills on this occasion is explained by the fact that many tigers had
already been shot and the “game” was becoming scarce. It is not stated
how many oxen in all were thus sacrificed.
Now we submit that, whatever may be said in defence of big-game
shooting in general, this usage of domestic animals--animals towards
whom in all civilised countries it is recognised that mankind has
moral, and often legal, obligations--is a very shocking malpractice.
That the actual suffering witnessed and chronicled is a small part
only of the whole is everywhere obvious. These books teem with cases
in which the animals escape wounded, to linger for days, or perhaps
weeks. We read, for instance: “I kill a big male (elephant). As to
the other male and a female, I wound but lose them both after a day’s
pursuit. However, as the male seemed to me to be doomed, I send four
men in search of it. They return without result after passing the night
out of doors. I found this elephant dead on the 26th”--that is, after
seventeen days in a climate where bodies do not lie long on the ground.
We can quite believe that this author does not overstate the case when
he candidly admits: “A good hunter, however careful, adroit, or well
seconded he may be, must count one out of every two animals which he
pursues as lost, owing to the many difficulties of his profession. This
is the minimum, for how many wound or miss three or four animals before
killing one!”
PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS.
It remains only to say a few words about the morality of this form of
amusement. It is often said amongst humane people that hunting is only
a relic of more barbarous times, but it seems to us to be something
more than this. It may have taken its origin with primitive man, but it
has certainly made important developments of its own in recent times.
There is little in common between the act of the primitive savage,
who, for the sake of his food, pitted his strength and skill against
an animal, and the wholesale and reckless slaughter, aided by the
appliances of modern science, and carried on merely for the pleasure of
killing. Acts otherwise disagreeable and disgusting may sometimes be
justified by the motive, but a search through several volumes devoted
to this sport has failed to reveal any more exalted motive than the
desire for trophies--as they are called--to show to admiring friends,
and the love of killing. “At daylight we start on the trail, on which
there are spots of blood, followed by spurts and large clots. When we
see that, ‘the heart laughs,’ as the natives say, and victory is almost
certain.” We learn that “to bring down an animal as big as an omnibus
horse with each barrel, to roll it over as though it were a rabbit, is
a pleasure which one does not often experience”; and we are also told
how the author had “the pleasure of looking at a magnificent maneless
lion stretched in a pool of blood.”
Of the real motive there can unfortunately be little doubt, and the
excuses that are made by the perpetrators for their murderous work are
hardly worthy of serious consideration.
The moral defences for this kind of sport are of the same nature as the
famous snakes in Iceland--there are none; and the flounderings of the
big-game hunter, when he tries to defend himself, show that his ethics
and theology are of the same primitive kind as are his other springs of
action, handed down from barbarous ancestors.
One writer quoted above tells us, of course, that he gives place to no
one in his “love of all dumb creatures collectively”--whatever that may
mean--which he seems to think justifies his putting bullets into them
_individually_ whenever he has a chance, and letting them crash through
the forests, as he describes, in pain and terror, very likely to die in
agonies days afterwards.
Another excuse urged is that the hunting instinct in us has been
given us by God, and therefore should be followed. It apparently never
occurred to the writer that pity for the unoffending animals “butchered
to make a sportsman’s holiday” may also be a God-planted instinct, no
less than the love of slaughtering them, though apparently he vastly
prefers the latter.
That blood-sports develop and encourage a manly spirit, necessary for
the progress of the race and especially of the British nation, is
perhaps the most common. But here, surely, at the outset we need a
definition of terms. If manliness is synonymous with indifference to
the suffering of the weaker, and selfish gratification at the cost of
others, if it is manly to blow a piece “as big as the crown of a hat”
out of the side of a timid deer, just for amusement, then certainly
this sport is eminently manly. If, on the other hand, the qualities
which differentiate the civilised man from the barbarian are a greater
regard for the rights of the weak and a deeper sympathy with the
feelings of others, then without doubt these amateur butchers should be
regarded as an anachronism in civilised communities.
The chocolate-coloured native, we read in one book, “would not and
could not understand that we had not come to fight elephants and lions
like gladiators in the arena, but to overcome them by superior tactics
_without more risk than was necessary_, and by the judicious handling
of arms of precision” (italics ours). Certainly we think the naked
savage here shows a finer instinct for what may be noble and manly in
warfare than his so-called civilised brother. For the gladiator who
has the hardihood to meet his enemy in fair single combat, at mortal
risk to himself, we can feel some admiration, even though the game
is a barbarous one; but for the butcher who skulks behind a tree and
slays his innocuous victim by mechanical contrivances with as little
risk to himself as possible, we can feel nothing but contempt. “In
a short time,” we are told by our hero, “four elephants were lying
dead, shot through the head or heart, never having caught sight of
us. The remainder of the herd decamped.” A glorious achievement in
the estimation of the perpetrators apparently, but one to which we
personally should be ashamed to see our name attached.
THE BLOOD LUST.
In the preface to one of the books from which we have quoted, we are
told the story of a certain French hunter who, having been made an
officer, was asked by a friend if he intended now to give up killing
lions, to which he replied: “It is impossible; it seizes me like a
fever, and then I absolutely must go and lie in wait.” This does seem
in some cases to be the most charitable explanation of a strange mental
condition, and in view of the harm which these so-called sportsmen are
doing, it is becoming a question for the community, whether they should
not be temporarily confined, like others suffering from dangerous and
destructive mania. With shooting-galleries and a continuous series of
tin elephants and antelopes they could be allowed to indulge their
mania quite harmlessly, and in the evenings they could write up their
diaries and chronicle their wonderful adventures without fear of
contradiction.
Apart from the question of the cruelty involved, we have now the sad
spectacle of the rapid extermination of many animals merely for the
selfish gratification of a very small section of the public. The
recent efforts of Governments to save them are not likely to have much
effect. They are not based on any humane principles, of course, but are
directed apparently to preventing the total extermination of certain
animals, in order, at any rate partly, that a favoured few may still
have the pleasure of killing them under game restrictions.
Thus _The Times_ drew attention to the fact that in Nyasaland for a £10
licence you may kill 6 buffaloes, 4 hippopotamus, 6 eland, and so on up
to a total of 94 animals. For £10 you may buy the privilege to deprive
the world of 1 elephant, while you may kill 4 for £60. The writer of
the article from which we quote tries to show that the ivory of the
tusks will pay expenses.
We may quote here the following from an article by Sir H. H. Johnston,
on “The Protection of Fauna, Flora, and Scenery,” in the _Nineteenth
Century_, of September, 1913:
“An agitation is again arising for leave to destroy the
big game of Africa--especially in Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and
East Africa--wherever there are possibilities of European
settlement. The plea advanced now is that the big game, more
than man or the smaller mammals and birds, serve as reservoirs
for trypanosomatous or bacillic disease-germs, which are then
conveyed by tsetse-flies or ticks to the blood of domestic
animals and man. This argument should be examined with
scientific impartiality, because so great is the blood-lust on
the part of young Englishmen or their Colonial-born cousins
that they are for ever trying to find some excuse to destroy
whatever is large or striking in the local fauna.”
The only method which would have any likelihood of really protecting
the animals would be to make it penal for anyone to kill any of them,
or to have in his possession any skin, skull, or other “souvenir.”
Without their trophies and without the possibility of recounting their
exploits to their admiring readers, the big-game hunters would lose
their main stimulus, and might devote their time and energies to some
more useful and less barbarous pursuit.
BLOOD-SPORTS AT SCHOOLS
THE ETON HARE-HUNT.
We are often told that the true way to teach kindness to animals is “to
begin with the young.” Let us see how they begin with the young at the
chief of English public schools.
“I have told the Master of the Beagles that he must not do
anything which is unlawful. I am sure that he would not do
anything cruel willingly. But until the common sense of the
nation expresses itself in the shape of a law forbidding the
hunting of wild animals, I cannot interfere with the Beagles,
which are here an old institution.”
Such were the terms in which Dr. Warre, when Headmaster of Eton,
expressed his refusal--his first of many refusals--to substitute a
drag-hunt for the hare-hunt now in favour at Eton College; and his
argument has since been the subject of much humanitarian protest,
and of not a few memorials to the Governing Body. But there is one
point concerning Dr. Warre’s remarks which seems to have almost
escaped attention--that the Eton Beagles are not, after all, so old
an “institution” as his words would imply, in the sense of being
recognised and encouraged by the school authorities, for, as a matter
of fact, they have only been openly permitted since about sixty years
ago, and they were not actually legalised until 1871. In the old Eton
Statutes of Henry VI. it was ordained under the head of “Discipline”
that “no one shall keep in the college any hounds, nets, ferrets,
hawks, or falcons for sport,” and for this reason the authorities long
refused to give official recognition to the Beagles. In the reign of
Dr. Keate the hunt, according to Mr. Wasey Sterry’s book on Eton, was
“unlawful, though winked at,” and this state of affairs continued
until about the middle of the past century, when the Beagles began to
be regarded as on a par with cricket and football. At last, under the
revised Statutes framed by the new Governing Body, which was called
into being by the Public Schools Act of 1868, all earlier regulations
were repealed, and the Beagles became legalised, having thus passed
through the three successive stages of being prohibited, winked at, and
recognised as “an old Eton institution.”
It may seem strange that the sporting propensity of schoolboys should
have thus defied and survived the ban placed upon it by the pious
Founder; but the history of Eton shows it to have been always the home
of cruel sports. We are told by Sir H. Maxwell Lyte, the historian of
the school, that “sports which would now be considered reprehensible
were tolerated and even encouraged at Eton in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.” “No work,” he says, “was done on Shrove Tuesday
after 8 a.m., and at Eton, as elsewhere on this day, the practice
prevailed of torturing some live bird. The college cook carried off
a crow from its nest, and, fastening it to a pancake, hung it up on
the school door, doubtless to serve as a target.” Then, again, there
was the once famous and popular ram-hunt. “The college butcher had to
provide a ram annually at election-tide, to be hunted and killed by
the scholars,” the unfortunate animal being hamstrung and beaten to
death in Weston’s Yard. Even in the nineteenth century such sports as
bull-baiting, badger-baits, dog-fights, and cat and duck hunts, were
“organised for the special edification of the Eton boys.”
It is from these good old times that the present hare-hunt is a
survival, and though it may now be conducted, as Dr. Warre has stated,
in a legal and “sportsmanlike” manner, this certainly was not the case
at a period no more remote than the headmastership of Dr. Balston
(1857-1864), as we learn from Mr. Brinsley Richards’ well-known book,
“Seven Years at Eton,” from which the following passage is quoted:
“It is not pleasant to have to write that the Beagles were
often made to hunt a miserable trapped fox which had lost one
of its pads. Those who bought maimed foxes, as more convenient
for beagles to hunt than strong, sound foxes, should have
reflected that they might thereby tempt their purveyors to
mutilate these animals. How could it be ascertained whether the
fox supplied by a Brocas ‘cad’ had been maimed by accident or
design? It was an exciting thing for jumping parties of Lower
Boys, when out in the fields they saw the beagle-hunt pass them
in full cry--first the fox, lolloping along as best he could,
but contriving somehow to keep ahead of his pursuers; then
the pack of about ten couples of short, long-eared, piebald,
or liver-streaked hounds, all yelping; then the Master of the
Hunt, with his short copper horn; the Whips, who cracked their
hunting-crops and bawled admonition to the dogs with perhaps
unnecessary vehemence; and lastly the Field of about fifty.”
It is specially worthy of note, as bearing upon a later controversy,
that Mr. Brinsley Richards states that “runs were far better when a
man was sent out with a drag.” The drag is thus proved to have been
in successful use at Eton almost as long ago as when the Beagles were
first openly tolerated.
The prohibition once being cancelled, the popularity of the hare-hunt
grew apace until it reached its zenith in the reign of Dr. Warre, when
the doings of the hunt were regularly reported--in choice sporting
jargon--in the _Eton College Chronicle_, so that the whole school,
even to the youngest boys, was made aware of them. A reference to old
numbers of the _Chronicle_ will show plenty of instances. Here are one
or two extracts taken almost at random from these records of the chase:
“_March 20, 1897._--A hare was soon put up in the first
wheat-field, and, running back through two small spinneys in
the field she was found in, went away towards Ditton Park.
Hounds ran very fast over the Bath Road and straight away into
Turner’s gardens. After being bustled about for fifteen minutes
in the gardens, our hare went away at the far end. Turning
left-handed, our hare was viewed running parallel with the road
and into some brickfields.… After we had been casting round for
some time without success among the rows of bricks, hounds were
taken back into a small hut. Hardly had they got inside before
old Varlet pulled her out from under a rafter, absolutely
stiff.”
“_February 23, 1899._--Time, one hour, fifty minutes. A very
good hunt, since scent was only fair, and we were especially
unlucky to lose this hare, which was beat when she got back to
Salt Hill. On the next day we heard that our hare had crawled
up the High Street to Burnham, and entered a public-house so
done that it could not stand, and was caught by some boys, who
came to tell us half an hour afterwards, but we had just gone
home. Too bad luck for words!”
And so on, with repeated references to “breaking her up,” and hounds
“thoroughly deserving blood.”[22]
Here, again, is the published testimony of a spectator of one of these
successful runs:
“On February 4, 1899, being in the vicinity of Eton, I had an
opportunity of seeing one of these hare-hunts, and I will give
a short and exact description of what took place.
“At three o’clock some 180 boys, many of them quite young,
sallied forth for an afternoon’s sport with eight couples of
the College Beagles. A hare was found at 3.15 near the main
road leading to Slough. It was chased through the churchyard
and workhouse grounds at this town into a domain dotted with
villas, called Upton Park. Escaping from this spot, it ran
towards Eton, but soon doubled back to Upton Park, the numerous
onlookers in the Slough Road lustily shouting at the dazed
creature all the time. These circular chases were thrice
repeated, the hare always getting back to Upton Park.
“Twice did the animal come within a few paces of where I was
standing, and its condition of terror and exhaustion was
painful to behold. The boys, running after the hounds, were
thoroughly enjoying the thing, and two masters of the College,
I was told, were amongst them. Now for the final scene, at
which a friend of mine was present.
“The hare, which had been hunted for two hours, having got into
a corner at Upton Park which was bounded with wire-netting, was
seized by the hounds and torn. The master of the pack then ran
up, got hold of her, and broke her neck. The carcass was handed
to one of the dog-keepers, who cut off the head and feet, which
trophies were divided among the followers. The keeper with his
knife then opened the body, and the master, taking it in his
hands and holding it high above the hounds, rallied them with
cries, and finally threw it into their midst, as they had,
in the language of the _Eton College Chronicle_, ‘thoroughly
deserved blood.’
“I make no comments upon these doings; I only say that I think
the British public ought to know how boys are being trained
at our foremost school in respect to the cultivation of
compassionate instincts towards the beings beneath us.”
It is not surprising that the Humanitarian League should have
addressed remonstrances to Dr. Warre on the subject of the Beagles;
one wonders rather that this “old Eton institution” should have so
long remained unchallenged by societies which profess to protect
animals from injury, and to teach humanity to the young, especially
as Dr. Warre was himself a member of the committee of the Windsor and
Eton Branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals, and as Etonian subscriptions go yearly to provide a fund for
prosecuting carters and drovers who ill-use the animals under their
charge!
THE LIBERTY OF THE BOYS.
To all these protests Dr. Warre had practically but one answer--that
hare-hunting not being _illegal_, he could not interfere with the
liberty of the boys in the matter, many of whom, he stated, are in
the habit of hunting “when at home in the holidays, and with the
approval of their parents.” But this plea is at once invalidated by
the fact that many things are prohibited to schoolboys which may (or
may not) be permitted to them at home, and which are not in themselves
illegal. Some of the elder boys, for example, smoke when at home in the
holidays, and with the approval of their parents; yet if these young
gentlemen, relying on Dr. Warre’s argument, had started a smoking-club
at Eton, he would not have hesitated to interfere very promptly with
their freedom. Why, then, should an excuse which is not nearly good
enough to justify a smoking-club be seriously put forward by the
headmaster of a great public school when a cruelty-club is in question?