This contrast is of some interest. Let us see what the National Society says about sport. Of course, it is not bound to attack sport. But the reasons which it gives for remaining neutral are to be noted.
1. It says, very truly, that it is in great part supported by sportsmen.
2. It says, further, that the cruelties of sport lie outside its own proper work:—
"Our opponents frequently ask us why we do not attack some form of cruelty other than vivisection, which they consider more heinous. Our Honorary Secretary recently summarised this argument in his own amusing manner thus: We must not arrest the man in Tooting for kicking his wife till we have stopped the woman in Balham starving her children, and we must not arrest the woman in Balham for starving her children until we have stopped the man in Tooting kicking his wife." (1901.)
Later (1903) the dramatis personæ are a man in East Islington jumping on his wife, and a woman in West Islington stabbing her husband. But this argument, of course, will not hold. For it is the same men who denounce wounds made (under anæsthetics) for physiology, and who make wounds (without anæsthetics) in sport.
3. It says that the "object" of the sportsman is to kill; but the "object" of the experimenter is to torture:—
"There is a vast difference between the killing of animals and the torturing of them before killing them. The object of the sportsman is to kill his quarry; the object of the vivisector is to keep his victim alive while he dissects it."—Mr. Wood (1903).
"The object of the sportsman is to kill, and the object of the vivisector is to keep his victim alive while he cuts it up."—Lord Llangattock (1901).
"The vivisector is nothing if not a tormentor; the sportsman is not a true sportsman if he seeks to inflict pain on his quarry.... One (the pain of a horse falling on asphalt) is the result of an accident to be deplored, the other (the pain from an experiment) is done of devilish malice prepense."—Leader in the Society's official journal, (1899).
"I am not so mentally and ethically confused as to be unable to distinguish between the entirely different moral acts of killing and torturing."—Mr. Coleridge (1901).