[To THE EDITOR OP TB " SDECTATOR."1 SIR,—Yon have made
one or two statements in your article on Lord Cromer and the R.S.P.C.A. which I must traverse, though I am sure they are made quite unwittingly. The "Vice-Presidentship of the R.S.P.C.A. was not, as you say, "conferred on him upon the initiative of the members them- selves." If you read the Council's own resolution, published in the Times of May 26th, you will see that the Council deny your statement categorically, and claim that it is they, the Council, and not the members themselves, who appoint Vice- Presidents. If you were right in your assumption that the resignation of Lord Cromer would diminish subscrip- tions, which is an assumption and nothing more, that diminu- tion would have to be tremendous before the Society would, under its present management, be "in urgent need of funds.," The present Council do not spend their income in spreading the activities of the Society on behalf of animals cruelly treated. They hoard money. The last accounts for 1909 record the investment of £23,984, and the accounts for the year 1908 record the investment of £21,464. The policy of the Council would therefore seem to be to hoard money instead of to spend it increasingly in mitigating the wrongs of animals. In any case the Society by no stretch of imagira- tion can be described as "in urgent need of funds." I am sure you must be unaware of the fact that the Council issued a whip to all the members before the meeting, whereas no whip was issued by myself or my friends. This fact precludes you from saying, as you do, that my friends and I represented nobody but ourselves at the meeting. We certainly were as representative of the whole Society as were those who voted against us. Again, when you say that a poll of the whole Society would display us as without support, it is fair to assert that you are wrong, for under the rules of the Society the Council could have claimed that poll, and that they did not do so is valid evidence that they had sufficient discretion to hold them back from any such intrepidity.—I
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