We have got to answer these questions like men, or they will soon be answered for us by the extermination of the wild life. For twenty-five years we have been smarting under the disgrace of the extermination of our bison millions. Let us not repeat the dose through the destruction of other species.
CHAPTER VII
THE GUERRILLAS OF DESTRUCTION
We have now to deal with The Guerrillas Of Destruction.
In warfare, a guerrilla, or bushwhacker, is an armed man who recognizes none of the rules of civilized warfare, and very often has no commander. In France he is called a "franc-tireur," or free-shooter. The guerrilla goes out to live on the country, to skulk, to war on the weak, and never attack save from ambush, or when the odds clearly are on his side. His military status is barely one remove from that of the spy.
The meat-shooters who harry the game and other wild life in order to use it as a staple food supply; the Italians, negroes and others who shoot song-birds as food; the plume-hunters and the hide-and-tusk hunters all over the world are the guerrillas of the Army of Destruction. Let us consider some of these grand divisions in detail.
Here is an inexorable law of Nature, to which there are no exceptions:
No wild species of bird, mammal, reptile or fish can withstand exploitation for commercial purposes.
The men who pursue wild creatures for the money or other value there is in them, never give up. They work at slaughter when other men are enjoying life, or are asleep. If they are persistent, no species on which they fix the Evil Eye escapes extermination at their hands.