is surely one of the most curious facts in natural history, and makes
it seem almost an injustice to horses, cows, pigs, and other domestic
creatures, that they are denied a privilege which is so freely accorded
to their wilder brethren. Why should deer, for instance, be specially
favoured in this respect? The stag, as a noble lord once remarked, is a
most pampered animal. “When he was going to be hunted he was carried to
the meet in a comfortable cart. When set down, the first thing he did
was to crop the grass. When the hounds got too near, they were stopped.
By-and-by he lay down, and was wheeled back to his comfortable home. It
was a life that many would like to live.” It appears, therefore, that
it is a loss, a deprivation, not to be hunted over a country full of
barbed wire and broken bottles by a pack of stag-hounds. Life is mean
and poor without it; for, to humans and non-humans alike, sport, as the
same nobleman expressed it, is “the gift of God.”
But the sportsman can be very “slim” when hard pressed in controversy
by his implacable pursuers, and among his many devices for confusing
the issue, the most subtle, perhaps, is the metaphysical argument which
pleads that it is better for the animals to be bred and killed in sport
than not to be bred at all, and that it is to the “preservation” which
sport affords that certain species owe their escape from extinction.
Mr. R. A. Sanders, late Master of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds,
has thus written of the stag (_Nineteenth Century_, August, 1908):
“He has lived a life of luxury for years, and has a bad
half-hour at the end. From his point of view surely the
pleasure predominates over the pain. For if it were not for the
hunting, he would not exist at all.”
When a Bill was introduced in Parliament in 1883 for the prohibition
of the cruel sport of pigeon-shooting, it was opposed by Sir Herbert
Maxwell on the ground that a pigeon would rather accept life, “under
the condition of his life being a short and happy one, violently
terminated,” than not be brought into existence; and the same sportsman
has since stated, as a “salient paradox,” that one who takes delight in
pursuing and slaying wild animals may claim to rank among their best
friends. It escaped his notice, as it escapes the notice of all who
seek refuge in this amusing piece of sophistry, that it is beyond our
power to ascertain the feelings or the preferences of a pigeon, or of
any other being, _before_ he is in existence; what we have to deal with
is the sentience of animals that _already_ exist.
And as for the contention that animals are “preserved” by sport, it
is sufficient to point out that it rests on a mental confusion between
the individual animal and the species. It would be little comfort to
the individual fox who is torn to pieces by the hounds to know, if he
could know, that his species is preserved by his tormentors, and that
the same process of death-dealing will thus be perpetuated. When it is
asserted that but for fox-hunting the fox would have been exterminated
in England like the wolf, the answer of course is that of the two
methods extermination is far the more merciful. Can it be pretended
that it would have been kinder to wolves to keep a number of them alive
in order that sportsmen might for ever pursue and break them up?
And, really, if it is so kind to animals to preserve them that they may
be worried with hounds, we ought to feel some compunction at having
allowed the humane old sport of bear-baiting to be abolished; for,
according to the same “salient paradox,” the bear-baiter was Bruin’s
best friend. It is sad to think that there used to be bears in many an
English village where now they are never seen!
It is for the fox, perhaps, that the sportsman’s solicitude is most
touching and most characteristic. “If we stay fox-hunting,” it has been
said, “foxes will die far more brutal deaths in cruel vermin traps,
until there are none left to die.” How tender, how considerate, is this
disinterested regard for the welfare of the hunted animal![29] The
merciful sportsman steps in to save a noxious species from extinction,
and in return for such “preservation” demands that the grateful fox
shall be hunted and worried and dismembered for the amusement of his
gentle benefactor. But are not our fox-hunting friends just a trifle
too clever in making, at one and the same time, two quite incompatible
and contradictory claims for their beloved profession--first, that
it saves the fox from extermination; and, secondly, that it rids the
country-side of a very mischievous animal? “For six good months,” says
the _Sportsman_, “he is allowed to frolic at his ease, with all his
poultry-bills paid for him.” The argument here is that there can be
no cruelty in fox-hunting, because the fox is preserved; but, in that
case, what about the following defence of fox-hunting by the editor
of the “Badminton Library”? “The sentimentalist,” he says, “does not
consider those other tragedies for which the fox is responsible--the
rabbits, leverets, poultry, and game birds that he devours daily. The
death of a fox is indeed the salvation of much life.”
So the farmer is to be grateful to the fox-hunter because the fox
is killed, and the fox himself is to be grateful to the same person
because he is _not_ killed! It is obvious that the sporting folk
cannot have it both ways; they cannot take credit for the destruction
of a pest and also for preventing that pest being exterminated by the
injured farmer. Let them choose one of the alternative arguments and
keep to it.
“Hark ye, then, whose profession or pastime is killing!
To dispel your benignant illusions I’m loth;
But be one or the other, my double-faced brother--
Be saviour or slayer--you cannot be both!”
The more one considers it, one cannot but smile at the sportsman’s
“love” for the animals whom he so persecutes and worries. Tom Tulliver,
we remember, was described by George Eliot as “fond of animals--fond,
that is, of throwing stones at them”; and so it is with this affection
of the sportsman’s. “What name should we bestow,” says an old writer,
“on a superior being who, without provocation or advantage, should
continue from day to day, void of all pity or remorse, to torment
mankind for diversion, and at the same time endeavour with the utmost
care to preserve their lives and to propagate their species in order
to increase the number of victims devoted to his malevolence, and be
delighted in proportion to the miseries which he occasioned? I say,
what name detestable enough could we find for such a being? Yet if we
impartially consider the case, we must acknowledge that, with regard to
the inferior animals, just such a being is the sportsman.”[30]
TRUST THE SPECIALIST.
Such, then, are the arguments which are advanced in all seriousness,
and without a suspicion or twinkle of humour, to prove that
blood-sports are a benefit to mankind and to the lower races alike. But
before concluding I must mention one other piece of reasoning which
is as amusing as any specimen of sportsman’s logic--the “trust the
specialist” fallacy, which asserts that none but sportsmen can fairly
pass judgment on sport. For example, when a memorial was presented to
a former Prime Minister against the Royal Buckhounds, a certain paper
gravely remarked that “what proportion of the protesting gentlemen had
ever been on horseback, it was not easy to determine.” The assumption,
it will be seen, is that when any cruel practice is arraigned before
public opinion, we are not merely to trust the specialist on technical
matters that rightly lie within his ken, but we are to let him decide
the wider _ethical_ issues, on which, being no more than human, he is
certain to have the strongest professional prejudice. It is an argument
worthy of the Sublime Porte itself.
In like manner Lord Ribblesdale, when defending stag-hunting in
his book on “The Queen’s Hounds,” expressed the sportsman’s case
as follows: “Most people will agree that conclusions founded on
practice must always have a slight pull when placed in the scales with
conclusions based upon theory, hearsay, or conjecture--even granting
the fullest credit for sincerity and _bona fides_ to the opponents of
stag-hunting.”
Now, it is, of course, absurd to represent the ethical objections to
sport as “based upon theory, hearsay, or conjecture,” for the methods
of sportsmen are well known and beyond dispute, and many of those who
most strongly condemn such practices have been sportsmen themselves and
are thoroughly conversant with the facts. But what I wish to point out
is that Lord Ribblesdale’s description of the sportsman’s defence of
sport as “a conclusion founded on practice” might be just as logically
applied to the criminal’s defence of crime. To invoke the judgment of
an expert on the morality of a practice in which he is professionally
interested is an error similar to that of setting the cat to watch the
cream.
On the whole, it is not surprising that the sportsman who can devise
no cleverer modes of escape from his humanitarian pursuers than the
sophisms above mentioned is already being brought to bay, and stands
in imminent danger of being, controversially, “broken up.” Indeed,
considering the nature of the arguments adduced in its favour, one is
inclined to think that sport must be not only cruel to the victims of
the chase, but ruinous to the mental capacity of the gentlemen who
indulge in it. It can hardly be doubted that the ludicrous aspect of
modern sport will more and more present itself to those who possess
the sense of humour; and we may even hope that the poverty-stricken
caricaturists of our comic papers will some day relinquish their
threadbare jokes over the blunders of the hunting-field and the
shooting-box, to discover that the subject of sport is rich in another
kind of comedy--the essential silliness of the habit itself, and the
crass absurdity of the arguments put forward by its apologists.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Some of these fallacies have been incidentally referred to in
preceding chapters, but it is convenient, at the expense of a little
overlapping, that they should here be treated together.
[25] _Blackwood’s Magazine_, August, 1899.
[26] Both these lines of argument were followed by Dr. Lang, Archbishop
of York, when on a recent occasion (November 16, 1913) he pronounced
what may be called the Foxology at the dedication of a stained window
to the memory of an aged blood-sportsman who was killed in the
hunting-field. That a Christian minister should have been “launched
into eternity,” as the phrase is, while engaged in hunting a fox,
might have been expected to cause a sense of very deep pain, and even
of shame, to his co-religionists. What actually happened was that an
Archbishop was found willing to eulogise, in a consecrated place of
worship, not only the reverend gentleman whose life was thus thrown
away, but the sport of fox-hunting itself!
[27] “My Sporting Holidays,” by Sir H. Seton-Karr, 1904.
[28] But let us not forget the delightful remark of the Archbishop of
York, that “even the labourer, when he felt the stir of the Meet, got
just one of those fresh events, excitements, and interests that he
needed in what otherwise was often a very monotonous life.”
[29] This humane aspect of sport may be aptly illustrated by a passage
in De Quincey’s essay on “Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts”:
“The subject chosen ought to be in good health, for it is absolutely
barbarous to murder a sick person, who is usually quite unable to bear
it. And here, in this benign attention to the comfort of sick people,
you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine
the feelings. From our art, as from all the other liberal arts, when
thoroughly mastered, the result is to humanise the heart.”
[30] Soame Jenyns, 1782.
APPENDIX
PAGE
I. SPORT AS A TRAINING FOR WAR 149
II. “BLOODING” 155
III. THE HUNTING OF GRAVID ANIMALS 158
IV. DRAG-HUNT _VERSUS_ STAG-HUNT 162
V. CLAY PIGEON _VERSUS_ LIVE PIGEON 166
VI. COURSING 170
VII. THE GENTLE CRAFT 174
VIII. SPOILING OTHER PEOPLE’S PLEASURE 179
APPENDIX
I
SPORT AS A TRAINING FOR WAR
It is often said, in attempted justification of “sport,” that it is
the best training for war. This is true only in the sense that as far
as concerns the creation and the perpetuation of a certain aggressive
spirit, war and sport are certainly kindred pastimes with a good deal
in common. They both date from a prehistoric period when man
“Butted his rough brother-brute
For lust or lusty blood or provender,”
and both, having been prolonged into an age which ought to have left
them far behind with other antiquated barbarisms, are now defended by
the same moral and economic fallacies, as being, in the first place,
part of the great “struggle for existence,” “survival of the fittest,”
and so forth, and, secondly, as “good for trade.” Good for trade they
both are, in the sense that they help the few to snatch a temporary
profit at the expense of the many; and as for the survival of the
fittest, if you are determined to wrest that theory from its true
meaning, it may be made to cover both war and sport at a stretch. As
Robert Buchanan said:
“Under the fostering wing of Imperialism, brute force is
developing more and more into a political science. There is no
excess of rapacity, no extreme of selfishness, no indifference
to the rights of the weak and helpless, which Christian
materialism is not ready to justify. The Englishman, both as
soldier and colonist, is a typical sportsmen; he seizes his
prey wherever he finds it with the hunter’s privilege. He is
lost in amazement when men speak of the rights of inferior
races, just as the sportsman at home is lost in amazement when
we talk of the rights of the lower orders. Here, as yonder, he
is kindly, blatant, good-humoured, aggressive, selfish, and
fundamentally _savage_.”
We may take it for granted that, in the long run, as we treat our
fellow-beings, “the animals,” so shall we treat our fellow-men. In
spite of all the barriers and divisions that prejudice and superstition
have so industriously heaped up between the human and the non-human,
the fact remains that the lower animals hold their lives by the same
tenure as men do, and that there is no essential difference between the
killing of one race and of the other. The tiger that lurks in all of us
will not easily be tamed, so long as the deliberate murder of harmless
creatures for “sport” is a recognised amusement in every “civilised”
country. Once open your eyes to the kinship that links all sentient
life, and you will see very clearly the relation that subsists between
the sportsman and the soldier.
We recall an incident related some years ago at a Humanitarian League
meeting, where the craze for “big-game” shooting was being discussed.
Everyone knows how the possessors of such “trophies” as the heads and
horns of “big game” love to decorate their houses with these treasured
mementoes of the chase. It had been the fortune--good or bad--of the
narrator of the story to visit a house which was not only beautified
in this way, but also contained a _human_ head that had been sent home
by a member of a certain African expedition and “preserved” by the
skill of the taxidermist. When the owner of the head--the _second_
owner--invited the humanitarian visitor to see the trophy, it was
with some trepidation that he acquiesced. But when, after passing up
a staircase between walls literally plastered with portions of the
carcases of elephant, rhinoceros, antelope, etc., he came to a landing
where, under a glass case, stood the head of a pleasant-looking young
negro, he felt no special repugnance at the sight. It was simply a
part--and, as it seemed, not especially dreadful or loathsome part--of
the surrounding dead-house; and he understood how mankind itself is
nothing more or less than “big game” to our soldier-sportsmen, when
they find themselves in some conveniently remote region where the
restrictions of morality are unknown. The absolute difference between
human and non-human is a fiction which will not bear the test either of
fearless thought in the study or of rough experience in the wilds.
The temper which makes war still possible in the twentieth century
is that which is kept alive and fostered in so-called times of peace
by the practice, among other practices (for we do not, of course,
assert that sport is the _only_ accessory to war), of doing to death
thousands upon thousands of helpless animals for purposes of mere
recreation. Peace advocates who declaim against the infamies of war,
without taking note of the kindred infamies of sport, have, to say
the least of it, not looked very deeply into the subject of their
propaganda;[31] and precisely the same holds good of those “lovers of
animals” who are horrified at the idea of running a fox to death, but
are ready to accept the flimsiest of flimsy sophisms as an excuse for
going to war. Sport is, in truth, a form of war, and war is a form of
sport; and those who defend such institutions as the Eton Beagles, on
the ground that the schoolboys who indulge in them are thereby trained
to be the future stalwarts of Imperialism, are fully justified in
their contention--provided only that they look the facts of war and of
Imperialism in the face. The Etonians who, in the eighteenth century,
used to beat rams to death with clubs, and who now break up hares as
a half-holiday pastime, have always furnished a large contingent of
officers to the British Army. Need we wonder that wars flourish without
regard to morality or justice?
But when we turn to the assertion that the practice of sport is,
actually, the best _training_ for war, we find it to be contradicted
by facts. On this point we cannot do better than quote from a letter
addressed to the _Humanitarian_ by Mr. R. B. Cunninghame-Graham:
“The rise of Japan and the fighting qualities of the Japanese
have shaken sportsmen from their ‘sport-the-image-of-war’
position. It is well known that not only are the majority of
Japanese vegetarians, but that such a thing as a sportsman is
unknown amongst them. Yet, without wishing to disparage the
prowess of European soldiers, how many ‘sportsmen’ would wager
much money on the chances of a thousand picked Europeans if
opposed to a thousand Japanese soldiers in an open plain with
no weapons but swords?
“The Boer War, and the miserable figure cut by our officers in
comparison with the Boer officers in both shooting and riding,
disposed conclusively of the ‘sport-the-preparation-for-war’
argument, so dear to sportsmen. In fact, ‘sport’ as understood
in England cannot prepare men for war, even if they ride to
hounds three days a week, shoot the other three, and read the
_Pink Un_ on Sunday. English sport and war are different in
their essence, and one has no analogy to the other.
“In the one case men rise from a comfortable bed, bathe, and
breakfast, and even if they are exposed to weather during the
day, return at night to a well-cooked dinner and comfortable
bed. The horses they ride are valuable, highly-trained animals,
who are expected to put out their full strength for at most
two or three hours, and are perhaps not required again for two
or three days, or even expected to be required. The shooting
is done under the same conditions, and though requiring skill
(as does the riding in fox-hunting), is not of a nature to be
useful in war.
“In neither case does the ‘diversion’ conduce to the
self-denying or abstemious habits so essential in war. Of
course, I do not mean that sportsmen are of necessity of
intemperate habits, but in war the conditions are different
from those of sport. In the latter case the soldier rises,
perhaps from a night of rain round a camp-fire, gets, without
breakfast, on his half-starving horse, and jogs along all day
at a footspace, to sleep, supposing there is no fighting and he
has not been killed, once more by a camp-fire, perhaps again in
rain, or in a driving wind.
“Every condition under which the sportsman plays is different
from those under which the soldier works. As in the Roman times
regiments of gladiators proved the most useless at the front,
so I believe a regiment all composed of sportsmen would make a
miserable show before a thousand quite unsporting Japanese.”
To the same effect is the opinion of Sir H. H. Johnston, as expressed
in an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ of September, 1913.
“One is told that fox-hunting is a splendid school for riders,
the making of our cavalry, etc. Rubbish! Very few of our great
cavalry officers have been fox-hunters, or willing fox-hunters,
and practically none of the troopers. A large proportion of our
mounted soldiers are recruited from townsmen who never learned
to ride until they entered the riding-school. The Boers were
admittedly the cunningest, most enduring riders recent warfare
has known, but they, like their cousins of the Wild West, would
probably show themselves duffers in the hunting-field; at any
rate, they never practised in this school of steeplechasing.
The last thing I desire to do is to undervalue riding as an
exercise, an accomplishment, a necessary art in warfare, a
school for teaching suppleness, coolness, and courage. But the
fox is not a necessary ingredient in the curriculum.”
We conclude, then, that Sport, considered as a school for War, is
doubly to be condemned, inasmuch as, while it breeds the aggressive
and cruel spirit of militarism, it does _not_ furnish that practical
military training which is essential to successful warfare. Sport may
make a man a savage; it does not make him a soldier.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Here, for example, is a suggestive heading of an article in a
London paper (October 27, 1913) in reference to a meeting of the German
Emperor and the Emperor Francis Joseph for the purpose of promoting
peace: “PEACE EMPERORS MEET. THE KAISER SHOOTS 1,100 PHEASANTS WITH THE
AUSTRIAN ARCHDUKE.” A strange way of inaugurating peace!
II
“BLOODING”
THE BLOODING OF CHILDREN.
Of all practices connected with “sport” none are more loathsome than
those known as “blooding,” whether it be the “blooding” of children,
which consists in a sort of gruesome parody of the rite of baptism, or
the “blooding” of hounds--viz., the turning out of some decrepit animal
to be pulled down by the pack, by way of stimulating their blood-lust.
Here are a few examples:
On January 4, 1910, the _Daily Mirror_ published an account of the
“blooding” of the Marquis of Worcester, the ten-year-old son of the
Duke of Beaufort. In a front-page illustration the child was shown with
blood-bedaubed cheeks, holding up a dead hare for the hounds, while a
number of ladies and gentlemen were smiling approval in the rear.
Here, again, is an extract from the _Cheltenham Examiner_ of March 25,
1909, in reference to the “eviction” and butchery of a fox which had
taken refuge in a drain.
“Captain Elwes’s two children being present at the death of
a fox on their father’s preserves, the old hunting custom
of ‘blooding’ was duly performed by Charlie Beacham, who,
after dipping the brush of the fox in his own [_sic_] blood,
sprinkled the foreheads of both children, hoping they would be
aspirants to the ‘sport of kings.’”
Presumably the blood in which the brush was dipped was that of the fox,
not of Mr. Charles Beacham. But what a ceremony in a civilised age! One
would have thought that twentieth-century sportsmen, even if they would
not spare the fox, might spare their own children!
The following paragraph also appeared in a London paper in 1909:
“A pretty little girl on a chestnut cob, with masses of fair
curls falling over her navy-blue habit, was the chief centre
of attraction at a meet of the West Norfolk Fox-Hounds at
Necton. The pretty little girl was Princess Mary of Wales, and
the day will be a memorable one in her life. She motored back
to Sandringham carrying her first brush.… Princess Mary was
‘blooded’ by the huntsmen, and was presented with the brush,
which was hung on her saddle.”
In connection with deer-stalking, the practice of “blooding” has been
described as “a hunting tradition which goes back to the Middle Ages,
and recalls the days when the gentle craft of venery was the most
cherished accomplishment of our monarchs.”
THE BLOODING OF HOUNDS.