Speaking generally, we may class the remaining arguments under two heads: those which aim at showing that sport is of benefit to mankind, or at least not a symptom of cruelty in the sportsman; and those which actually discover it to be a blessing to the animals themselves.[26] In the former and more prosaic category must be placed the queer assertion that sport “adds to the food-supply” of the nation. We have all read how, after some aristocratic “shoot,” a number of pheasants or other palatable game were presented to the local hospital. Sport, it is seen, goes hand in hand with the charitable and the philanthropic—truly a touching picture! But the fact remains that the cost of the animals thus reared primarily for sport, and secondarily for the table, is far in excess of their market value as food, and this at once knocks the bottom out of the sportsman’s patriotic contention. Every stag that is stalked, every pheasant that is mown down in the battue, and every hare or rabbit that is knocked over in covert-shooting, has cost the country much more to produce than it is worth when butchered; and the game-preserver, far from being helpful to the community in this respect, is a positive encumbrance to it, as wasting labour in the production of what is not a food, but a luxury. Game is reared not for the benefit of the many, but at the cost of the many, to gratify the idle and cruel instincts of the few.
Not less illusory is the plea so frequently made in sporting journals as a justification of sport, that hunting and shooting “give employment” to a large number of people. “Do these hyper-humane faddists,” asks the Irish Field, “ever consider how, by doing away with many of what they are pleased to call spurious sports, they would be taking the actual bread-and-butter out of the mouths of thousands of men and their families? Hunting, shooting, and other sports give employment to such a vast number of people, directly and indirectly, that it would be nothing short of a national calamity if they were discontinued for any cause.” What is really proved by such apologists is that blood-sports are a terrible drain on the resources of the nation, and that millions are annually diverted from productive labour to be employed on the silliest form of luxury—the killing of animals for the mere amusement of rich people. It is the old fallacy of supposing that all expenditure of money, without regard to the nature of the commodities produced, is beneficial to the community at large.
Then there is the much-vaunted “manliness” of sport, so important a quality, we are told, in an imperial and military nation. Yet what could be more flagrantly and miserably unmanly than for a crowd of men to sally forth, in perfect security themselves, armed or mounted, with every advantage of power and skill on their side, to do to death with dogs or guns some poor skulking, terrified little habitant of woodside or hedgerow? This is what Sir Henry Seton-Karr has to say on this point:
“Only those who have experienced it can realise the strength of the hunter’s lust to kill the hunted, though they may find it difficult to explain. It is certain that no race of men possess this desire more strongly than the Anglo-Saxons.… Let us take it that in our case this passion is an inherited instinct—which civilisation cannot eradicate—of a virile and dominant race, and that it forms a healthy natural antidote to the enervating refinements of modern life.”[27]
The obvious answer to this claim is that civilisation is eradicating the destructive instincts of sport—with extreme slowness, no doubt, as in the case of all barbarous inherited tendencies, but surely and certainly nevertheless; and the fact that blood-sports are already condemned by many thoughtful people is a clear indication of what verdict the future will pass on the profession of killing for “fun.” That good physical exercise is provided by field sports none will deny, but it is just as undeniable that such exercise can be as well or better provided in other ways—by the equally healthy and far more manly sports of the gymnasium and the playing-field, which, be it noted, are capable of being utilised by a much larger number of people than the privileged pastimes of the crack huntsman and “shot.” There is no reason why the mass of the population should not, under a juster social system, have leisure to derive benefit from cricket, football, boating, hockey, and the other rational sports; but it is very evident that only a very few can ever find recreation in those blood-sports which are absurdly called “national.” The rational and humane sports may be for the many; the “national” and cruel sports must be for the few: that is not the least of the striking differences that distinguish them.[28]
To contend that blood-sports have no injurious influence on the minds of those who practise them seems about as reasonable as to assert that effect does not follow cause. Yet it is frequently urged, in defence of sport, that the pleasure is found not in the “kill,” but in the chase. That may be true in a sense. What humanitarians hold is not that sportsmen derive pleasure from the mere infliction of pain, but that they seek excitement without sufficient regard to the pain inflicted, and that this is apt, in some cases, to breed a positive love of killing, a real “blood-lust.” Take, for example, the following remark quoted from the Eton College Chronicle: “At the time we are writing, the Beagles have killed but twice, though by the time the Chronicle appears they may have increased this number by one.” Here it will be seen that what the boys’ journal dwells on is precisely the killing—surely a significant side-light on the influence of the sport. There is no escaping this question, whether at Eton or elsewhere: Why, if the painful pursuit of a sentient animal be not an essential part of the amusement, is the drag-hunt refused as a substitute? And if the drag be disdained as not sufficiently exciting, how can the inference be avoided that the zest of the pastime is enhanced by the peril of the quarry?
Sport a Blessing to the Animals.
But it is when he is demonstrating that sport comes as a boon and a blessing to the non-human races which are the victims of it that the sportsman is most entertaining. “They like it,” he asserts, when any pity is expressed for the hunted fox.
“Happy the hounds, loud-baying on his track!
Happy the huntsmen with their murderous call!