Killing for Sport

Killing for Sport. Essays by various writers, with a preface by Bernard Shaw. Edited by Henry S. Salt. London: G. Bell & Sons (for the Humanitarian League), 1915; price 2/6 net.

The Editor, who was, until quite recently, the able and enthusiastic Hon, Secretary of the Humanitarian League, feels that by including in this volume a number of recent essays, the work of different writers (each of whom is responsible only for the views expressed by himself), it has been possible to present the subject of sport as regarded from various standpoints and in a fuller light than has ever been done before. The list of authors who have contributed contains the names of George Greenwood, Edward Carpenter, Ernest Bell, Henry S. Salt, Maurice Adams, H. B. Marriott Watson, and others, and as sport is ably dealt with under the heads of Cruelty, Agriculture, Cost, Economies of Hunting, Game Laws, Wild Life, Callousness, Big Game, Blood Sports at Schools, and Fallacies of Sportsmen, it will be seen that the essays are representative and that the book justifies the claim of the Editor, in that it adequately sets forth the humanitarian and economic objections to blood sports.

That G. B. Shaw in his preface deals with the subject in a unique manner, is but saying once more that the preface is by G. B. Shaw. If one wanted to criticise and say he was not quite himself, one might venture to remark that he is serious almost throughout the whole length of thirty-four octavo pages. There are exceptional paragraphs, of course, like the following:-—

“Clearly the world of sport is a crystal palace in which we had better not throw stones unless we are prepared to have our own faces cut by the falling glass. My own pursuits as a critic are so cruel that in point of giving pain to many worthy people, I can hold my own with most dentists, and beat a skilful sportsman hollow. I know many sportsmen and none of them are ferocious. I know several humanitarians, and they are all ferocious. No book of sport breathes such a wrathful spirit as this book of humanity. No sportsman wants to kill the fox or the pheasant as I want to kill him, when I see him doing it.”

The point Bernard Shaw emphasises in this essay is that sport is not only cruel to the hunted animal but degrading to the hunter.

“The true objection to sport is the one taken by that wise and justly famous Puritan, who objected to bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. He rightly saw that it was not important that we should be men of pleasure, but that it was enormously important that we should be men of honour.” The following is sufficiently stinging, and this mainly because it is absolutely true:—

“Men must be killed and animals must be killed, nay, whole species of animals and types of men must be exterminated before the earth can become a tolerable place of habitation for decent folk. But among the men, who will have to be wiped out, stands the sportsman; the man without fellow feeling, the man so primitive and uncritical in his tastes that the destruction of life is an amusement to him, the man whose outlook is as narrow as that of his dog.”

Where all is so pithy, one feels sorely tempted to quote passage after passage, but we trust the reader will buy the book for himself.

We indulge ourselves by giving the concluding sentences, which bear on the question of sport for pastime, as it mostly is.

“To kill as the poacher does, to sell or eat the victim, is at least to act reasonably. To kill from hatred or revenge is at least to behave passionately. To kill in gratification of a lust of death is at least have villainously. Reason, passion and villainy are all human. But to kill, being all the time quite a good sort of fellow, merely to pass away the time, when there are a dozen harmless ways of doing it, equally available, is to behave like an idiot or a silly imitative sheep.”

There is a pleasant incident to record in connection with this essay. A leading magazine asked for permission to print it, for granting which Mr. Shaw was paid £50. He handed the cheque over to the Humanitarian League.