Читать книгу A Sheaf - John Galsworthy - Страница 13

Table of Contents

(A Letter to the Daily Express, 1913.)

Writing from the standpoint of one whose love of animals at one time caused him to enjoy the spectacle of them performing tricks and capers, into the educational history of which he never thought of going, I believe I well understand the attraction of “the animal show” in music-halls or circuses. Nor do I doubt that there are animal trainers with such a natural gift and love of beasts that the process of training becomes almost pleasurable to creatures who are not by nature intended to ape mankind.

I even believe that there may be animals, especially among dogs, who grow to appreciate the glamour of the footlights, and the sense of their own importance. But when all this is said, I have come to abominate the thought of the whole thing, and I fancy that any one who takes the trouble to think the matter out, any one who does not allow his natural delight in animals to run away with his sense of proportion and the fitness of things, must come to the same conclusion.

To simply bring a horse, a dog, a cat, or even an elephant or camel on the stage as part of the atmosphere or machinery of a play, treating it with the kindness that is invariable I believe in such cases, is one thing, and I by no means object to it. But the deliberate training and use, for the purpose of making a living out of them, of numbers of animals, taking them from place to place, hall to hall, suitable or unsuitable, is a very different “proposition,” as Americans would say.

The very nature of it invites suffering. And I do not well see how any amount of inspection and the granting of licences is going to do away with the greater part of a wretchedness that comes from forcing creatures away from more or less natural to highly unnatural conditions of life; nor can I see how, for the purpose of granting licences, satisfactory evidence is ever going to be obtained that training (which is and must be quite a private affair between trainer and animal) is not accompanied by cruelty.

In a word, I would like to see the “animal show” abolished in this country. It is too ironical altogether that our love of beasts should make us tolerate and even enjoy what our common sense, when we let it loose, tells us must, in the main, spell misery for the creatures we profess to be so fond of.