Part 3

And this disposes of the notion that sport is the training of a conquering race. Even if such things as conquering races existed, or would be tolerable if they did exist, they would not be races of sportsmen. The red scalp-hunting braves of North America were the sportingest race imaginable; and they were conquered as easily as the bisons they hunted. The French can boast more military glory to the square inch of history than any other nation; but until lately they were the standing butt of English humorists for their deficiencies as sportsmen. In the middle ages, when they fought as sportsmen and gentlemen, they were annihilated by small bodies of starving Englishmen who carefully avoided sportsmanlike methods and made a laborious business (learnt at the village target) of killing them. As to becoming accustomed to risks, there are plenty of ways of doing that without killing anything except occasionally yourself. The motor-cyclist takes more trying risks than the fox-hunter; and motor-cycling seems safety itself compared to aviation. A dive from a high springboard will daunt a man as effectually as a stone wall in the hunting field. The notion that if you have no sportsmen you will have no soldiers (as if more than the tiniest fraction of the armies of the world had ever been sportsmen) is as absurd as the notion that burglars and garrotters should be encouraged because they might make hardier and more venturesome soldiers than honest men; but since people foolishly do set up such arguments they may as well be mentioned in passing for what they are worth.

The question then comes to this: which is the superior man? the man whose pastime is slaughter, or the man whose pastime is creative or contemplative? I have no doubt about the matter myself, being on the creative and contemplative side by nature. Slaughter is necessary work, like scavenging; but the man who not only does it unnecessarily for love of it but actually makes as much of it as possible by breeding live things to slaughter, seems to me to be little more respectable than one who befouls the streets for the pleasure of sweeping them. I believe that the line of evolution leads to the prevention of the birth of creatures whose lives are not useful and enjoyable, and that the time will come when a gentleman found amusing himself with a gun will feel as compromised as he does now when found amusing himself with a whip at the expense of a child or an old lame horse covered with sores. Sport, like murder, is a bloody business; and the sportsmen will not always be able to outface that fact as they do at present.

But there is something else. Killing, if it is to give us heroic emotions, must not be done for pleasure. Interesting though the slaying of one man by another may be, it is abhorrent when it is done merely for the fun of doing it (the sportsman’s way) or to satisfy the envious spite of the worse man towards the better (Cain’s way). When Charlotte Corday stabbed Marat, and when Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh shot the Regent Murray, they were stung by intolerable social wrongs for which the law offered them no redress. When Brutus and his fellow-conspirators killed Cæsar, they had persuaded themselves that they were saving Rome. When Samson slew the lion, he had every reason to feel convinced that if he did not, the lion would slay him. Conceive Charlotte Corday stabbing Marat as an exercise of manual and anatomical skill, or Hamilton bringing down the Regent as a feat of marksmanship! Their deeds at once become, not less, but more horrifying than if they had done them from a love of killing. Jack the Ripper was a madman of the most appalling sort; but the fascination of murder for him must have been compounded of dread, of horror, and of a frightful perversion of an instinct which in its natural condition is a kindly one. He was a ghastly murderer; but he was a hot-blooded one. The perfection of callousness is not reached until a life is sacrificed, and often cruelly sacrificed, solely as a feat of skill. Peter the Great amusing himself by torturing his son to death was a revolting monster; but he was not so utterly inhuman in that crime as he was when, on being interested by a machine for executing criminals which he saw in a museum on his travels, he proposed to execute one of his retinue to see how the machine worked, and could with difficulty be brought to understand that there was a sentimental objection to the proceeding on the part of his hosts which made the experiment impossible. When he tortured his son he knew that he was committing an abomination. When he wanted to try an experiment at the cost of a servant’s life he was unconscious of doing anything that was not a matter of course for any nobleman. And in this he was worse than abominable: he was deficient, imbecile, less than human. Just so is the sportsman, shooting quite skilfully and coolly without the faintest sense of any murderous excitement, and with no personal feeling against the birds, really further from salvation than the man who is humane enough to get some sense of wickedness out of his sport. To have one’s fellow-feeling corrupted and perverted into a lust for cruelty and murder is hideous; but to have no fellow-feeling at all is to be something less than even a murderer. The man who sees red is more complete than the man who is blind.

The triviality of sport as compared with the risk and trouble of its pursuit and the gravity of its results makes it much sillier than crime. The idler who can find nothing better to do than to kill is past our patience. If a man takes on himself the heavy responsibility of killing, he should not do it for pastime. Pastimes are very necessary; for though a busy man can always find something to do, there comes a point at which his health, his sanity, his very existence may depend on his doing nothing of the smallest importance; and yet he cannot sit still and twiddle his thumbs: besides, he requires bodily exercise. He needs an idle pastime. Now “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do” if the idler lets his conscience go to sleep. But he need not let it go to sleep. There are plenty of innocent idle pastimes for him. He can read detective stories. He can play tennis. He can drive a motor-car if he can afford one. He can fly. Satan may suggest that it would be a little more interesting to kill something; but surely only an outrageous indifference to the sacredness of life and the horrors of suffering and terror, combined with a monstrously selfish greed for sensation, could drive a man to accept the Satanic suggestion if sport were not organized for him as a social institution. Even as it is, there are now so many other pastimes available that the choice of killing is becoming more and more a disgrace to the chooser. The wantonness of the choice is beyond excuse. To kill as the poacher does, to sell or eat the victim, is at least to act reasonably. To kill from hatred or revenge is at least to behave passionately. To kill in gratification of a lust for death is at least to behave villainously. Reason, passion, and villainy are all human. But to kill, being all the time quite a good sort of fellow, merely to pass away the time when there are a dozen harmless ways of doing it equally available, is to behave like an idiot or a silly imitative sheep.

Surely the broad outlook and deepened consciousness which admits all living things to the commonwealth of fellow-feeling, and the appetite for fruitful activity and generous life which come with it, are better than this foolish doing of unamiable deeds by people who are not in the least unamiable.

G. B. S.

March, 1914.

FOOTNOTES:

Copyright, George Bernard Shaw, 1914, U.S.A.

KILLING FOR SPORT

THE CRUELTY OF SPORT

BY GEORGE GREENWOOD

It is a favourite rhetorical device of the vivisectionists to divert argument from the main question into side issues by instituting a comparison between vivisection and the various forms of field-sports, such as pheasant-shooting, for example. It is hardly necessary that I should point out the futility of such controversial methods; for, as Horace long ago taught us, there is no use in an illustration which merely substitutes one dispute for another. Vivisection may be wrong, though pheasant-shooting be right; while if pheasant-shooting be wrong, it is obviously absurd to appeal to it in aid of the cause of vivisection.

But for those who recognise that it is the duty of man to abstain from all practices which involve cruelty to the lower animals, it is important to consider the whole question of sport, and to endeavour to arrive at just and logical conclusions upon the ethical issues which are raised by its pursuit.

Here, at the outset, I think it is necessary, in order to avoid confusion, to attempt some definition of the word “cruelty.” By so doing we shall escape the absurdities of those who tell us that all sport is cruel, and yet that its pursuit can, nevertheless, be justified by other considerations. The late Professor Freeman long ago pointed out that those who speak in this slipshod fashion are ignorant of the very elements of logical reasoning. “Cruelty” is a word which carries its own condemnation with it. It denotes something which is morally unjustifiable, just as the word “lie” denotes a morally unjustifiable falsehood. Justifiable falsehoods are not lies, neither can a lie ever be a justifiable falsehood. For the purposes of this paper, therefore, I am content to define “cruelty” as “the unjustifiable infliction of pain.” I think that is better than defining it as “the unnecessary infliction of pain.” For, to take an example, the shooting of a partridge can hardly, in any ordinary case, be looked upon as a necessary act. To define cruelty, therefore, as “the unnecessary infliction of pain” would be to settle the question--or, rather to beg it--in such a case, by means of a definition. It is true that the definition which I have preferred leaves the question what is or is not justifiable, in any given case, open for discussion; but that is, of course, inevitable, whatever definition we may adopt.

If, then, we are compelled to say of any sport that it is cruel, we are compelled also to admit that such sport is morally unjustifiable. Now, sport, according to the general acceptation of that term, is of two kinds. There are, first, sports such as cricket, football, golf, rowing, and many others, which do not involve the taking of animal life; and, secondly, there are the sports of hunting, coursing, and shooting, in all their various branches, which are frequently denoted by the compendious term of “blood-sports”; and it is with the latter class of sports only that this essay is concerned.

Let us, therefore, examine these blood-sports, and ask ourselves in each case whether they are cruel, and therefore unjustifiable, or whether, notwithstanding the pain and suffering which they necessarily involve, they are, nevertheless, justifiable forms of amusement and recreation, such as a humane and thinking man need not scruple to indulge in.

But before proceeding farther with the discussion, I must own that I am not a little appalled at the audacity of undertaking such an inquisition. For is it not the boast of our countrymen that England is the home and the motherland of sport? What appellation does an Englishman more ardently desire than that of “sportsman”? “A good sportsman,” “a good all-round sportsman,” “a fine old sportsman”--what names are more honourable than these? I have frequently heard it said of a man that “he was always ready for a bit of sport,” and it was generally recognised that very high praise was implied by such a description. Fox-hunting, hare-hunting, rabbit-coursing, ferreting, ratting, badger-baiting--it was all one to him so long as he could get “a bit of sport”! What higher character could a Briton possibly aspire to? No wonder the man was so popular with his neighbours, and so highly esteemed!

And so, if we begin to question the humanity or the propriety of any of these forms of amusement, the crushing answer invariably is, “But it’s sport!” Surely that is amply sufficient! Surely that is final! What more do you want? Sport is always excellent. Sport is an end in itself. Sport is a god worshipped in a thousand temples throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. Let us burn incense on those altars; let us reverently bow the knee at those shrines. Great is God Sport of the Britishers!

Nay, does not our very Empire depend on Sport? Is it not Sport that knits the fibres and fashions the sinews of an Imperial race? It were almost as well, then, to speak disrespectfully of religion itself as to speak slightingly of Sport. And yet, as philosophers, as social students, as humanitarians, we must nerve ourselves even for this perilous quest. We must not shrink. We must not be deterred from pushing our investigation even into the Holy of Holies of this great god which the people of England have set up.

And let us face our worst dangers at once. First, then, I would say a few words about the most honoured and the most celebrated of all our British sports, “the noble science,” as it has been called--the glorious sport of fox-hunting.

FOX-HUNTING.

Now, fox-hunting seems to most of us almost a part of the British Constitution. It takes rank among the best-established of our time-honoured institutions. What would become of the glory of England, were it not for fox-hunting? And speaking as one who in days gone by was, so far as time and opportunity and a shallow purse allowed, a votary of the chase, I can honestly say that the sport has more to say for itself than some who have never fallen under the sway of its fascination are able to realise or understand. Let us see what can be said for it.

Great and undeniable are the pleasures of the meet; great the delights of the country-side as the hounds are thrown joyfully into cover, with a burst of melodious chiding. What a picturesque sight! The busy, eager, indefatigable pack; gallant steeds impatient for the coming race, and scarlet coats lighting up the wintry woodland scene! Then the excitement of the “find”; the still greater excitement of the cry, “Gone away! gone away!” hounds in full cry, and the cheery blasts of the huntsman’s horn to rally the stragglers in the rear!

And if there be anything at all which can in any way justify the high-sounding title of “the noble science,” we may look for it now. For the man who can ride straight to hounds and hold his own over a stiff country must possess some qualities which are not to be despised. He must not only be a fine horseman--and fine horsemen are few and far between--but he must know how to combine courage with judgment, prompt decision with sound discretion. Here for the good rider, whose heart is in the right place, are the true pleasures of the chase.

But let us now look at the other side of the picture. It has been a splendid run, but the end approaches. The fox has been viewed dead-beat, painfully crawling into a hedgerow, with coat muddy and staring, tongue hanging out of his mouth, brush trailing on the ground. What sight more piteous can be conceived? A few minutes more and his merciless pursuers are upon him; and, to use the words of Whyte Melville, the Laureate of the chase,

“’Twas a stout hill-fox when we found him, but now ’Tis a thousand tatters of brown!”

This, then, is the end, and aim, and object of our sport--“the kill”! It is our pride to be “in at the death.” I confess I have often felt no little ashamed of my brother-man--man, that “paragon of animals,” “in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!”--as I have listened to those wild shrieks and yells of “Who-whoop” that proclaim--what? That a little animal has been hunted to its death. And it is this thought from which the thinking man can never escape, and which is to his enjoyment as the canker to the bud--the thought that it is necessary for his pleasure that a poor little animal, in all the agony of terror and exhaustion, should be running for its life before him! And since this is the inevitable concomitant of the sport--even the great and glorious sport of fox-hunting--the thinking man must ask himself, “Am I justified--morally justified--in purchasing my pleasure at such a price?” Can we for a moment doubt what the answer of the thinking man must be? I do not say that all fox-hunters are cruel men; it would be absurd, indeed, to bring such a charge. Many good and humane men--men who would shrink from and abhor anything that they recognised as cruel--are, nevertheless, habitual followers of the hounds. They have persuaded themselves--it is so easy to persuade oneself in accordance with one’s inclination, especially when the object to which one is inclined has all the sanction of custom and long usage--they have persuaded themselves that the sport is justifiable in spite of the suffering which is its necessary accompaniment and result. Or, perhaps, especially if they are young men, they have not thought about it at all. But I cannot help the belief that, as thought and true civilisation advance, it will be recognised that to seek pleasure in the hunting of any animal to its death is unworthy of a thinking and humane man. If the humane man can do these things, it must be because he has not yet become a thinking man. If the thinking man can do them, it must be because he is not a humane man.