PIT PONIES
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Miss Gardner asks me to withdraw the charge of exaggeration against her. I shall be pleased to do so if and when she withdraws the exaggeration: She has misquoted official reports. She has lifted passages out of their context. She has given as " facts" within inverted commas statements collected from a number of sources that are qualified and sometimes completely altered when read as they were originally printed or spoken. She has drawn a protest from Mr. J. R. Rider on account of the use she made of an extract from his paper.
In her original letter she stated that "life to the pit pony is a series of brutal despotic events." Will she withdraw that reckless generalization ? And has she read the report of Mr. Stanley Bishop of the Daily Express, who made an independent investigation during the present month and, although on his own admission he was biased on the cruelty side beforehand, reported that "the pit horse, without any question, is in far better physical condition and infinitely better cared for than the ordinary horse of a similar class on the surface" ?
I am only asking that this question should be discussed according to the ordinary rules of controversy and evidence and that reckless generalizations and unsubstantiated, vague or anonymous accusations should be omitted. Nobody can have any feeling but disgust and condemnation for such an instance as that related by Miss Violet Wood. But she would not, I suppose, contend that it is other than an isolated instance—and I submit that even that can, unfortunately, be paralleled by occasional examples of ill-treatment of ani- mals on the surface taken from the records of the R.S.P.C.A. and other societies. Not that that is any excuse.—I am,
Previous page
