CIRCUS AND TRAINED ANIMALS [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sta,—As a member of the " Jack London Club " (R.S.P.C.A.), may I beg all lovers of the truth, as well as lovers of animals, to realize what it means when they take their children to the show and glitter of a circus entertainment where animal actors perform. Never could the audience imagine the prolonged and systematic cruelty which underlies these performances. Occasionally a few people with imagination have a natural sense of something wrong behind the scenes— one of those was the well-known writer, Jack London, who wrote his last book, Michael, Brother of Jerry, with the deliberate purpose of informing the public of the unavoidable brutality on which the trained-animal world rests—and this is what he tells :— " Behind the show and glitter of performance was a body of-. cruelty so horrible that I am confident no 'normal person exists who, once aware of it, could ever enjoy looking on at any trained- animal turn."' Jack London was no namby-pamby sentimentalist, and to quote from his book again, he says :— " I have a strong stomach and a hard head, but what turns my head and makes my gorge rise, is the cold-blooded, conscious deliberate cruelty and torment that is manifest behind ninety-nine of every hundred trained-animal turns. Cruelty as a fine art, has attained its perfect flower in the trained-animal world."
Read Jack London's account of the spiked saddle on the bucking mule, and each and every tortuous method underlying the training of these lesser animals of the world, both tame and wild. Read of the trainer who reigns in an animal hell, which he creates and makes lucrative, and judge what you think of a people and country who patronize such tragic performances ! Nor does it make any less the sin, if the training takes place on the Continent. In places unhampered. by laws for the protection of animals, the countenancing and encouraging of such evils is every bit as bad, and only,
adds " hypocrisy " to our everlasting shame ! _ If the laughter-loving public would join the " Jack London Club " (at the cost of a postage stamp) and make themselves acquainted with the grim facts involved in training for the " sawdust ring," then gradually for want of any audience these shows would cease to exist. The boycotting of animal performances in England would act as an example to other civilized countries to do likewise, and thereby abolish another blot on humanity.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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