20 FEBRUARY 1932, Page 17

MAN versus THE REST [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

am often amazed at the inconsistency of human thought. One moment we applaud the efforts which are being made to ameliorate the lot of animals, the next we applaud the work of those who spend their lives destroying life for the well-being of mankind. Who is to say where sensibility begins and ends? Is it more cruel to harpoon a whale, pole-axe a hdllock, poison a rat, trap and starve a fly on stickY-paper, or kill a malarial parasite with quinine ?

The ultimate true friend of animals should live a static and vegetarian existence clad in cotton clothes, moving only when absolutely necessary and then so carefully as not to harm the teeming life beneath his feet. His body should be willingly offered as a feeding ground for hungry parasites of all kinds, external and internal ; he should welcome lovingly bugs, lice, ticks, mosquitos (especially malarial), flies, and a thousand other animals which lesser men prefer by cruelty to do without. He should grow cabbages for the caterpillars, roses for the greenfly, fruit for the birds, potatoes for the wire worths, and so on ad infinitum, harming nothing and helping all he can. Moreover, he must be ever on the lookout for the opportunity of staying by personal sacrifice -the gnawing hunger of some poor starving carnivore, and must not live too long for fear of disappointing that deserving animal community which find men more appetising after death.

And what if he is a disciple of Bose and believes that vegetable life has smtsibflity as well ? He must then perforce live in a cave, naked, on a diet of synthetic food, offering hospitality to all bacteria, and looking forward to the day when his decomposing body can assist the growth of some plant languishing for lack of phosphates and nitrogen.—