MR. GWYNN'S REPLY.
[Your correspondent, Mr. G. H. Cunningham, is so polite to me that I must not only reply to him, -but reply politely. Yet, in honesty, -I think that 'one of °the most immoral pro- ceedings in this world is to debase the intellectnal currency by false argument ; and by false argument Mr. Cunningham= makes me responsible for a • doctrine which should justify the 'killing of the defenceless 'fore the sake of a thrill.
Let us try to get facts straight. Ordinary morality dis- tinguishes between the sanctity of human life and the regard due to life which -is not human. A distinction, =though not quite the same distinction, is made -by-those Easterns •Whose - attitude to animals Mr: Cunningham would -most approve. Some of them will avoid stepping on a worm when-they are • on the way to cut a man's throat. However, -let us stick to Western morality. No Western justifies killing a human in cold -blood, 'except by-right of war or legal penalty. No Western that I know of thinks-'"it morally wrong-to kill a - salmon. The question which concerned me was : May you kill a salmon for sport ? Now, I have known a person, and a young woman at that, who liked to go to a weir when the - 'fish -were being 'lifted ,out and to 4mock them on -the head. I call that disgusting. So would every sportsman. The only disagreeable part about getting a fish is the necessity lof killing it. The sport, which is the adventure, lies in the t capthre. You are model% Man (using one of the primitive arts*to circumvent a wild creature Whith you-want ; capturing a salmon is making a prize. You-are doing what is certainly permissible,, what for -many men is' a duty, 'but what does in the end involve a piece of butcher's work. How far does that soil the adventure?
If 'you were cast up on a desert island and had to make your 'living, catching fish 'would be part of the adventure. Nobody wants all that adventure in a lump, but the fish- , catching part of it always -appeals to me, unless it gets too easy; as has happened with-mackerel and even with trout. Nothing was left in it then but the killing and I stopped. The ordinary sportsman doesn't want to kill, but lie is -net ashamed of killing and thinks it morally -indifferent, though aesthetically- disagreeable. Mr.- Cunningham really -must- not- assert- that -because -I justify-doing for adventure -what- others do for a livelihood there lies an inference which would- defend what all human morality abominates.
Cannot he see that what tempted these little beasts in Chicago was simply the desire to do what is frightful, and therefore has a kind of disgusting thrill ? Their act- has no relation whatever to the instinct which, still tells man that it is a fine thing to have won in alight for life. Richard Martin, creator of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, belonged to a society in which it was often said that a gentle- man should have " shot his man and got his man " before he was twenty. I am not sure that ' " Hair-trigger Dick" might not have endorsed that sentence. Well, we have outgrown it—and not -only the duel. Most men who-went through the War without killing anybody land this includes many who were gallant in many nasty 'places) are glad to think that they escaped the experience. Not impossibly others may be a little sorry. It was a poor business to be always a target and never hit back. 'But for all it was an adventure to have -known the fear -of death and to have with- stood it, though perhaps adventure was not the thing sought; Yet, suppose many went to the war just for the adventure, took a hand in killing and being killed, just to see how they stood with others-4f we justify that as an adventure is it to be held that we justify 'killing for killing's sake ?
In ordhiarytimes, for the ordinary man in the 'otdinary street, the scope of possible adventure -is disastrously con- tracted, -and it is dangerous to put needless curbs on his holi- day. But for heaven's sake do not confuse conscience. Unless there is a distinction between the permitted and the unpermitted all morality, written and unwritten, goes by the board and every code of honour with it. If certain 'things are -atisOlutely and on all -grouhds set aside as untouchable, you weaken their defence by endeavouring to show that Miless standards of a fantastic 'delicacy are established we e bpehing 'the Way to -fantastic grossness. -The very thing that was most likely to have saved those depraved youngsters in Chicago was a sense of sportsmanship. Call their beastli-, ness an adventure ! any common badger-baiter or cock. fighter would -sicken at the idea. Such a one would say, "These are unnatural little brutes, knock them on the head, or shut them up uncomfortably, and let us hear no more about them." -Mr. Cunningham, on the other hand, says, "These gentlemen are by a considerable number of- degrees, but still only by certain degrees, worse than the man who thinks it a pleasant adventure to catch a salmon and does not mind althongh the: .fish gets hurt in the process." Which attitude is more likely to produce other examples of the Chicago kind-? I think myself that neurotic action comes from centres where neurotic reasoning is in fashion. And I do not believe that these Chicago youths had a decent angler in their ancestry.—SrEramr Gw£Dat.j.
Previous page
