Beastarians

P: Recently, reports from San Diego, whether originating in the fertile brain of the press, or having some basis in fact, related how the great warships of the U. S., plowing the Pacific, encountered a school of whales, and, eager to find targets for their gunnery, released from their guns the steely messengers of death. The aim was true. Fragments of cetaceous blubber bounded high in the air. The school had learned its lesson. And The Christian Science Monitor commented: "War preparedness is bad enough in itself without adding thereto such barbarous activities."

P:Recently, in Africa, a huntress, one Mrs. Green of Ireland, parted the tropic foliage, took aim with her rifle at a horny rhinoceros The bullet sped, but only wounded. Seven more times she fired; seven more wounds were inflicted. The enraged beast turned and charged. Airs. Green went down, was trampled to death. Properly speaking, no odium could be attached to the great beast. He had been sought out for slaughter. He had been invited to a duel to the death. According to his lights and the law of the jungle, he had done well. Even according to the law of civilization, his was a justifiable homicide, committed in self-defence.

P: Last week, quite a different scene from either of those above-related took place in Washington. A luncheon was given in honor of Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske, famed actress. The guests included William K. Horton, President of the American Humane Association; Mrs. George Barnett, wife of the Major General; and others who, for want of a better term, may be called beastarians (by analogy with humanitarians). Presumably, the luncheon was entirely vegetarian. It was given in honor of Mrs. Fiske because, during the last 25 of her 60 years of life, she has devoted herself to the cause of suffering beasts. She has worn no furs, no feathers; her stage ermine has been cotton batting; no flesh has she eaten. She spoke of our responsibility toward our dumb fellow creatures, which civilization has met "without intelligence, without justice and without mercy."

Said Mrs. Fiske:

"It is nothing more nor less than the persistence of that prehistoric savagery that makes it seem necessary, in this modern day, still to clothe ourselves in the skins of the animals and to eat their flesh. Society is so organized as to make it seem necessary for thousands of shouting, cursing men to stand knee-deep in blood, dealing ferocious blows right and left upon millions of shrieking animals in order that we may be fed.

"Nowhere in all the history of crimes and cruelties is there anything for cold-blooded genius in the invention of torment--nowhere is there anything to compare with that little machine of Hell on earth, the steel trap. The steel trap has no place in anything even remotely describing itself as civilization and to abolish it we shall rely upon the modern woman."

Inspired by her words, a committee was created to campaign against the use of steel traps to capture "shrieking" animals.