CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 514, 29 April 1949, Page 5

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

Sir-I got considerable amusement from reading the "Cruelty to Animals" letters. This discussion (if the very downright letters can be so described) started, I believe, with an English lady’s opinion that we in New Zealand are callous in-our treatment of domestic animals. (Personally, I think that her views’ will become modified in course of time and, anyway, hasty generalisations are to be deplored.) Whereupon two New Zealanders immediately put the "Homie" in her place by somé very forthright but misleading generalisations of their own about the English, ; What are the facts? In England we have a predominantly urban and suburban population which, perhaps, at times does sentimentalise over its dbmestic pets. In New Zealand We have a population which, even in the cities, in the main is not so divorced from the land and therefore has a much more practical and utilitarian outlook as to livestock but certainly not exactly callous. The attitude towards animals probably does not differ if one compares the New Zealand countryman with his English counterpart. To describe any farmer’s attitude towards animals as "callous" is as. much an exaggeration as to so stigmatise the

unsentimental and detached attitude of nufses and doctors towards their patients. To generalise that the "predominant smell in England" is "of dog" is about as fair as to accuse the New Zealander of an aroma of cows, pigs and sheep. To paint a picture of the pavements of English towns as unfit to traverse on account of evidence of dogs is as unfair and ill-natured as judging New Zealand by what our footpaths often prove about our cows. I cannot credit that the standards of public cleanliness can have fallen so much sifice I left England as a young man in 1923. And even after 25 years I still hesitate to generalise about New Zealand.

FIFTY FIFTY

( Ngaruawahia)