DUMB FRIENDS IN GREECE
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, --Friends of animals will learn with pleasure that, largely thanks to the efforts of Mr. Rouphos, President of the Athens S.P.C.A., of Mr. Papanastasiou, the ex-Premier, and of Senator Protopapas, the Bill for the better protection of animals has just passed into law. The law is a great advance on that of 1917. It imposes fines and imprisonment, with summary punislunent, for maltreatment of animals, makes the ship's captain personally liable for cruelty involved in the transport of animals on his ship (one of the crying needs of Greek civilization), formally sanctions the collection of stray dogs in the area of Greater Athens by the Athens S.P.C.A., to which are assigned a subsidy and the fines enforced for cruelty to animals, and allows the painless destruction of maimed or aged animals, unfit for work, on a vet.'s certificate, without compensation.
The law, let us hope, will not remain a dead letter. The Minister who introduced it has promised that it shall be enforced. Greece ought not to be behind other nations of South-Eastern Europe in this civilizing work. lint, while the children's branch of the Athens S.P.C.A. is progressing, the intellectuals (except the Press) are, with few exceptions, indifferent, and the S.P.C.A. has half the membership of that of Belgrade. Yet, as the Greek Minister in London has said, "love for animals inspires some of the masterpieces of modern Greek folk-poetry." The new la* and the distribution of 16,000 copies of a handbook on kindness to animals to all Greek elementary schoolmasters and to the boy and girl Scouts should make the new generation show that love of animals is a modem, as well as an ancient Greek, characteristic.-1 am, Sir, &c., WILLIAM MILLER
(Member of the Council of the Athens Athens. S.P.C.A.).
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