ETHICS OF HUNTING
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,—We came home from Kenya when your paper was in the middle of a correspondence about stag hunting. It is so strange how some people can see no other view but that of their own pleasure or sport. They fail to understand that there are very many of us who would sooner never see a stag at all than have the pleasure of hunting it to death in order to make its nearer acquaintance.
It seems that there are two sets of people—those who love killing animals and those who merely love animals. It appears that the former section is in the majority, and strangely enough they seem to think that their liking for perfecting their own skill in killing animals is the same thing as loving animals. Of course it is clearly absurd to try and prove that the animal does not mind. Everyone must be acquainted with those old engravings of hunted stags, where the exhausted animal is depicted in an agonized attitude, its beautiful eyes large with terror and pain. The reason I have referred to this is that these things were done before " humanitarianism " was invented.
I started taking in your paper a year Cr so ago simply for the sake of your views on these and similar questions.—
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