Kindness to animals was never a popular virtue. It is considered “soppy,” “sickly sentimentality.”
Men have always liked to bully horses to show what good riders they are, and what “control” they have over them. They think it draws forth admiration to be seen knocking a horse about. It shows their mental superiority over a mere brute.
Small men like to be seen lugging a big good-natured dog along by a chain, threatening him with a whip. It shows their great brain power over mere matter.
The feeding of starving birds in a hard winter and kindness to cats has always been merely tolerated, even before it became a crime to do so.
In the year 1917, in London, a poor old woman went off crying bitterly, unable to pay the fine imposed on her for giving a few crumbs out of her own scanty meal to some birds. But even in less enlightened times, in the days when birds were pitied, such doubtful conduct was not much approved of except in the case of old maids or little girls. The former were also allowed to keep cats and parrots. Such kindness was “too mawkish” for men and boys to stoop to. Boys should only stoop to pick up stones to throw at birds and cats. “Boys will be boys” and it is a pity to spoil their spirit.
Such boys are in their element now.
A great wave has arisen against mawkish sentimentality. Formerly societies were formed to enforce close seasons for birds and animals, to give them a chance to live in peace during the breeding season, and to prevent the extinction of fast vanishing species, and the Clergy instructed their parishioners in kindness to animals and the “mawkish” protection of defenceless rodents during the breeding season.
But this is changed in the present superior age.
Rabbits and hares can now be killed all the year round. A doe rabbit, dying in a snare or steel trap with a broken leg held by sharp steel teeth, lies suckling her young which have come to her, and the young die of starvation when she has died in torture.
Committees are formed in villages, the Vicar as chairman, which give prizes to the boys who destroy the most birds’ nests and kill the parent birds and their young. Little girls are given prizes for killing the most butterflies.