CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 499, 14 January 1949, Page 5

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

Sir,-I largely support "Sanctuary’s" letters re cruelty to animals in the Dominion and deplore your contentious remarks in your footnote, for they show you to be singularly unobservant and misinformed on the subject as well as displaying poor taste. The mention of cruelty to animals (this latter term includes, of course, Homo sapiens) opens up a wide field for reflection by thinking people to-day and is a moral issue which will have to be tackled sooner or later if we desire.

as a species, to advance at all. I doubt, however, whether "Sanctuary’s" statement that New Zealand tolerates a larger percentage of cruelty to animals than any other English-speaking country would stand critical examination. We lack here the fox and tame stag hunting so prevalent in the United Kingdom and the racial intolerance and even hatred of coloured peoples as in South Africa and the U.S.A. } _ However, neglecting the debatable and widespread practice of. vivisection, we must face the unpleasant fact that we (the British people) are a cruel nation, Bernard Shaw points out our habit of disguising our vices by giving polite names to the pastimes of sacrificing animals in various cruel ways in the name of sport, fashion, education and discipline. I do not believe that a boy intends to be cruel when he robs a bird’s nest; rather is his action merely a reflection of the superstitiously cruel routine under which he was brought up and to which he has become accustomed. "Let cruelty or kindness or anything else once become customary and it will be practised by people to whom it is not at all natural, but whose rule of life is simply to do only what everybody else does, and who would lose their employment and starve if they indulged in any peculiarity."

L. R.

ALLEN

(Rotorua).