A FAMOUS DOCTOR TO HIS PATIENT, A COUNT

Forest and Bird, Issue 59, 1 February 1941, Page 8

A FAMOUS DOCTOR TO HIS PATIENT, A COUNT

The Doctor: “To think that there are men capable of killing this harmless little songster!”

The Count: “You are an idealist, my dear doctor.”

The Doctor: “No, they call it sentimentality and only sneer at it. Let them sneer as much as they like, I do not care. But mark my words! The time will come when they will cease to sneer, when they will understand that the animal world was placed by the Creator under our protection and not at our mercy; that animals have as much right to live as we have, and that our right to take their lives is strictly limited to our right of defence and our right of existence. The time will come when the

mere pleasure of killing will die out in man. As long as it is there, man has no claim to call himself civilised; he is a mere barbarian, a missing link between his wild ancestors who slew each other with stone axes for a piece of raw flesh, and the man of the future. The necessity of killing wild animals is indisputable, but their executioners, the proud hunters of today, will sink down to the same level as the butchers of domestic animals.”

“Perhaps , you are right,” said the Count, looking up in the sky once more as we turned our horses and rode back to the Castle.

(Extract from “San Michele” by Dr. Axel Munthe.)