(From Los Angeles Herald.)
VEGETARIAN'S REPLY.
If you please, Mr. V., I am not a "religious faddist." I am not religious at all. I am a firm believer in the Golden Rule, applying it to man and beast.
In reply to your query, Mr. V. I will answer briefly: Self-preservation is the first law of nature, so protect yourself against the presumed invasion of tame and wild beasts, birds, etc., but do not presume we have the right to take life of anything which endures pain or runs away from impending danger unless occasion calls for it.
My letter to the Herald, if you please, was for those who profess to be godly and "in the kingdom." Religious people must be strictly humane or they are minus the God character and their profession is either a phantom or hypocrisy.
Of course men like yourself, who are afraid of being crowded off the earth, have a special self-given right to raise and cruelly slaughter any living creature for eating.
Meat eating will continue until the end of the world, no doubt, but the Humanitarian will not eat it; it will be devoured by ungodly church people and outsiders who like the flavor of flesh food, regardless of the wrong of premeditated killing.
T. J. W.
Compton, Cal.