Mr. de Selincourt’s article entirely lacks logic and relevance of humour of course there is no trace-and it is comical to find him expressing a fear of extremes. “If one started thinking of nothing but the fox’s feeling,” he says, “life would be intolerable”; but as nobody does start solely on that thought the remark is somewhat pointless. He is quite unaware that just as Mr. Bernard Shaw defined vegetarianism as “eating decently,” so the opponents of blood-sports have always dwelt not merely on the feelings of the fox, but also on the indecency of a supposed “gentleman” behaving like a savage. As Mr. de Selincourt lays stress on the “true gentleman” whom he sees in the blood-sportsman (he wisely does not allude to the practice of “blooding”) I would like to call his attention to a passage from a book quoted in another part of this very same number of The Countryman, (p. 123):—
“I was once told that no man was a true fox-hunter who did not drink to fox-hunting in a glass of liquor stirred with one of the pads of the fox … It was not uncommon, thirty years ago, for a gallon of ale to be poured through the open mouth of the decapitated fox; the mixture I have seen eagerly drunk.”
The Countryman invites discussion of this subject: but it is difficult to found a useful discussion on an article so uninformed as the one it has printed. If, as appears, it is itself in favour of these cruel practices (it prints on another page an illustration of cockfighting) it would be much more straightforward to avow its feelings outright as supporting the grand old pastimes of the country-side.
Henry S. Salt
The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review, Vol. 32 No. 11, November 1935, pp. 353-4
More by Henry Salt
- The R.S.P.C.A.: A Criticism, The Humane Review, 1907-8
- Blood Sports at School: The Eton Hare-Hunt, Killing For Sport, 1914
- Field Sports, The Food Reform Magazine, April-June 1883
- Sportsmen’s Fallacies, Killing For Sport, 1914
- Spoiling Other People’s Pleasure, Killing For Sport, 1914