MR. GALSWORTHY'S STOCKTAKING
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—No doubt many of your readers were delighted with Mr. Galsworthy's article in your Christmas Number. I was especially attracted by his reference to the caging of certain Wild animals. Will you allow me through the Spectator to make an appeal on their behalf and to urge all who have any influence to use it in arousing public opinion in the interests of these, too often, unfortunate beasts ? Until this has been done, legislation in regard to menageries cannot be expected.
The Zoo is a national institution and no child's education is considered complete unless he or she has been taken there. Perhaps, because we are all so used to the Zoo, many of us Never think of comparing the life of an animal there with that of the same animal in its natural surroundings. Yet `when anyone thinks of the life for which a lion or tiger was `created, is it not clear how hopeless and miserable is the Ir_bt of such an animal whose existence is spent pacing to and fro behind bars ?
I think that no better proof of the indifference with which people at large regard this matter of animals in captivity
puld have been forthcoming than the fact that no single rotest, that I have seen, has appeared in any newspaper against the recent caging of the man-eating tiger at the Zoo. What must be the sufferings of this animal free for eight Years in its native jungle and now a captive for the rest of its life under utterly unnatural conditions. Do not many of the exhibitions in menageries constitute a form of cruelty against which public opinion needs educating, before we can hope to see the realization of the Spectator's Better World ?
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