Part 16

What, then, is being done, in the face of these destructive agencies, to preserve our wild mountain districts, and the wild life that is native to them, from the ruin with which they are threatened? As far as I am aware, apart from occasional protests in newspapers, this only--that appeals are made to the public from time to time by the National Trust and kindred societies to save, by private purchase, certain “beauty spots” from spoliation. These appeals cannot but meet with the entire approval of nature-lovers, and the rescuing of such estates as Catbells, Gowbarrow, Grange Fell, and others that might be mentioned, represents a real measure of success. Still the question has to be faced--what is to be done in the future if, as is certain to happen, the menace to our mountains is maintained? It is too much to hope that large sums can always be raised by private subscription; also, while one favoured place is being safeguarded, others, less fortunate, are being destroyed. We cannot save our mountains generally by these piecemeal purchases; for even if the money were always procurable, the rate of destruction exceeds that of purchase, and the power of the many syndicates that would exploit the mountains must necessarily be greater than that of the few Societies that would preserve them. In a word, private action is quite inadequate, in the long run, to repel so extensive an attack.

What is needed is public action on a scale commensurate with the evil, in the direction of the “reservation” of certain districts as sanctuaries for all wild life. We need, in fact, highland parks, in which the hills themselves, with the wild animals and plants whose life is of the hills, shall be preserved in their wildness as the property of the people; an arrangement which would be equally gratifying to the nature-lover, the naturalist, and the mountaineer, and of vastly more “profit” to the nation as a whole than the disfigurement of its beautiful places.

Without at all suggesting that the National Trust should relax its efforts for the rescue by purchase of particular tracts, I think that it would be doing a still greater service if it could see its way to organizing a movement for pressing on the Government the urgent need of taking some active steps to counteract the injury which is being done by commercial interests to the true interests of the people. Otherwise the result will be that while a few spots are saved, whole districts will be lost, and eventually all that the nation will possess will be some oases of beauty in a desert of ugliness.

As I have elsewhere pointed out,[39] there is only one thorough solution of the problem, and that is, to nationalize such districts as Snowdonia, Lakeland, the Peak of Derbyshire, and other public holiday-haunts, and so to preserve them for the use and enjoyment of the people for all time. “If parks, open spaces, railways, tramways, water, and other public needs can be nationalized, why not mountains? It is impossible to over-estimate the value of mountains as a recreation-ground for soul and body; yet, while we are awaking to the need of maintaining public rights in other directions, we are allowing our mountains--in North Wales and elsewhere--to be sacrificed to commercial selfishness. If Snowdon, for instance, had been purchased by the public twenty years ago, the investment would have been a great deal more profitable than those in which we usually engage; but while we are willing to spend vast sums on grabbing other people’s territory, we have not, of course, a penny to spare for the preservation of our own.”

XIV

THE FORLORN HOPE

At least we witness of thee, ere we die, That these things are not otherwise, but thus. SWINBURNE.

Twenty-four years’ work with the Humanitarian League had left many problems unsolved, many practical matters undecided; but on one point some of us were now in no sort of uncertainty--that a race which still clung tenaciously to the practices at which I have glanced in the foregoing chapters was essentially barbaric, not in its diet only, though the butchery of animals for food had first arrested our attention, but also, and not less glaringly, in its penal system, its sports, its fashions, and its general way of regarding that great body of our fellow-beings whom we call “the animals.” It did not need Mr. Howard Moore’s very suggestive book, _Savage Survivals_,[40] to convince us of this; but we found in the conclusions reached by him an ample corroboration of those we had long had in mind, and which alone could explain the stubborn adherence of educated as well as uneducated classes to a number of primitive and quite uncivilized habits. “It is not possible,” he says, “to understand the things higher men do, nor to account for the things that you find in their natures, unless you recognize the fact that higher men are merely savages made over and only partially changed.”

Professor F. W. Newman’s warning, that the time was not ripe for a Humanitarian League, had to this extent been verified: if we had thought that we were going to effect any great visible changes, we should have been justly disappointed. But those who work with no expectation of seeing results cannot be disappointed; they are beyond the scope of failure, and may even meet, as we did, with some small and unforeseen success. The League was thus, in the true sense of the term, a Forlorn Hope; that is, a troop of venturesome pioneers, who were quite untrammelled by “prospects,” and whose whim it was to open out a path by which others might eventually follow.

Perhaps the success of the League lay less in what it did than in what it _demanded_--less, that is, in the defeat of a flogging Bill, or in the abolition of a cruel sport, than in the fearless, logical, and unwavering assertion of a clear principle of humaneness, which applies to the case of human and non-human alike. After all, it does not so greatly matter whether this or that particular form of cruelty is prohibited; what matters is that _all_ forms of cruelty should be shown to be incompatible with progress. Here, I venture to think, the intellectual and controversial side of the League’s work was of some value; for before a new system could be built up, the ground had to be cleared, and the main obstacle to humanitarianism had long been the very widespread contempt for what is known as “sentiment,” and the idea that humanitarians were a poor weakly folk who might be ridiculed with impunity. The Humanitarian League changed all that; and a good many pompous persons, who had come into collision with its principles, emerged with modified views and a considerably enlarged experience.

I have already spoken of some of the protagonists of the League: at this point it may be fitting to recount, in epic fashion, the names and services of a few of the influential allies who from time to time lent us their aid.

Mr. Herbert Spencer’s philosophical writings were fully imbued with the humane spirit. An opponent of militarism, of vindictive penal laws, of corporal punishment for the young, of cruel sports, and indeed of every form of brutality, he had done as much as any man of his generation to humanize public opinion. He willingly signed the Humanitarian League’s memorials against the Royal Buckhounds and the Eton Beagles.

Dr. Alfred R. Wallace was also in full accord with us, and he was especially interested in our protest against the Game Laws, “those abominable engines of oppression and selfishness,” as he described them in one of several letters which I received from him. He was anxious that some Member of Parliament should be found who would move an annual resolution for the abolition of these laws, and he considered that such a motion “would serve as a very good test of Liberalism and Radicalism.” In reference to flogging under the old Vagrancy Act, he wrote: “There are scores or hundreds of these old laws which are a disgrace to civilization. Many years ago I advocated enacting a law for the automatic termination of _all_ laws after, say, fifty years, on the ground that one generation cannot properly legislate for a later one under totally different conditions.”

“The Truth about the Game Laws,” a pamphlet of which Dr. Wallace expressed much approval, was written by Mr. J. Connell, author of “The Red Flag,” whose democratic instincts had led him to acquire first-hand knowledge of the nocturnal habits of game-keepers, and was prefaced with some spirited remarks by Mr. Robert Buchanan, who, as having been for many years a devotee of sport, here occupied, as he himself expressed it, “the position of the converted clown who denounces topsy-turvydom.” Buchanan’s humane sympathies were shown in many of his poems, as in his “Song of the Fur Seal,” inspired by one of the League’s pamphlets; he wrote also a powerful article on “The Law of Infanticide,” in reference to one of those cruel cases in which the death-sentence is passed on some poor distracted girl, and which clearly demonstrate, as Buchanan pointed out, that “we are still a savage and uncivilized people, able and willing to mow down with artillery such subject races as are not of our way of thinking, but utterly blind and indifferent to the sorrows of the weak and the sufferings of the martyred poor.”

George Meredith, for the last ten or twelve years of his life, was a friend and supporter of the League. “On a point or two of your advocacy,” he wrote to me, “I am not in accord with you, but fully upon most.” He declared the steel trap to be “among the most villainous offences against humanity”; and he more than once signed the League’s memorials against such spurious sports as rabbit-coursing and stag-hunting. When the Royal Buckhounds were abolished in 1891, he wrote to us: “Your efforts have gained their reward, and it will encourage you to pursue them in all fields where the good cause of sport, or any good cause, has to be cleansed of blood and cruelty. So you make steps in our civilization.”

Mr. Thomas Hardy more than once lent his name to the League’s petitions, and recognized that in its handling of the problem of animals’ rights it was grappling with the question “of equal justice all round.” In an extremely interesting letter, read at the annual meeting in 1910, he expressed his opinion that “few people seem to perceive fully, as yet, that the most far-reaching consequence of the establishment of the common origin of all species is ethical; that it logically involved a readjustment of altruistic morals, by enlarging, as a necessity of rightness, the application of what has been called the Golden Rule from the area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom.” This was, of course, the main contention of the Humanitarian League.

In 1896 the League addressed an appeal to a number of leading artists, asking them to make it plain that their sympathies were on the humanitarian side, and that they would at least not be abettors of that spirit of cruelty which is the ally and companion of ugliness. Very few replies were received, but among them was one from Mr. G. F. Watts, who, in becoming a member, wrote us a letter on the cruelty of docking horses’ tails (“barbarous in those who practise it, infinitely degrading in those who encourage it from so mean a motive as fashion--only not contemptible because so much worse”), which was very widely published in the press, and did great service in bringing an odious fashion into disrepute. Mr. Walter Crane was another artist who gave support on many occasions to humanitarian principles; so, too, was Mr. Martin Anderson (“Cynicus”), who employed on the League’s behalf his great powers as a satirist in a cartoon which castigated the tame deer hunt.

Count Tolstoy, it goes without saying, was in full sympathy with us; and so was that many-sided man of genius, M. Elisée Reclus. Famed as geographer, philosopher, and revolutionist, one is tempted to sum him up in the word “poet”; for though he did not write in verse, he was a great master of language, unsurpassed in lucidity of thought and serene beauty of style. He was a vegetarian, and the grounds of his faith are set forth in a luminous essay on that subject which he wrote for the Humanitarian League. Very beautiful, too, is his article on “The Great Kinship,” worthily translated by Edward Carpenter, in which he portrayed the primeval friendly relations of mankind with the lower races, and glanced at the still more wonderful possibilities of the future. His anarchist views prevented him from formally joining an association which aimed at legislative action; but his help was always freely given. “I send you my small subscription,” he wrote, “without any engagement for the future, not knowing beforehand if next year I will be penniless or not.” I only once saw Elisée Reclus; it was on the occasion of an anarchist meeting in which he took part, and he then impressed me as being the Grand Old Man without rival or peer; never elsewhere have I seen such magnificent energy and enthusiasm combined with such lofty intellectual gifts.

Ernest Crosby, another philosophic anarchist, was perhaps as little known, in proportion to his great merits, as any writer of our time. Elected as a Republican to the Assembly of New York State, he had been appointed in 1889 to be a Judge of the International Court in Egypt; but after serving there five years, his whole life was suddenly changed, owing largely to a book of Tolstoy’s which fell into his hands: he resigned his post, and thenceforward passed judgment on no man but himself. A poet and thinker of high order, he stood up with unfailing courage against the brute force of “imperialism” in its every form--the exploitation of one race by another race, of one class by another class, of the lower animals by mankind. It is strange that his writings, especially the volume entitled _Swords and Plowshares_, should be almost unknown to English democrats, for they include many poems which touch a very high standard of artistic excellence, and a few that are gems of verse. “The Tyrant’s Song,” for instance, expresses in a few lines the strength of the Non-Resistant, and of the conscientious objector to military service (“the man with folded arms”); yet during all the long controversy on that subject I never once saw it quoted or mentioned. A superficial likeness between Crosby’s unrhymed poetry and that of Edward Carpenter led in one case to an odd error on the part of an American friend to whom I had vainly commended Carpenter’s writings; for in his joy over _Swords and Plowshares_ he rashly jumped to the conclusion that “Ernest Crosby” was a _nom de plume_ for the other E.C. “I owe you a confession,” he wrote. “Hitherto I have not been able to find in Carpenter anything that substantiated your admiration for him; but _now_ a flood of light is illuminating his _Towards Democracy_.” I communicated this discovery to the poets concerned, and they were both charmed by it.

Crosby was a tall handsome man, of almost military appearance, and this, too, was a cause of misapprehension; for an English friend whom he visited, and who knew him only through his writings, spent a long afternoon with him without even discovering that he was the Crosby whose poems he admired.

Clarence Darrow, brother-in-law of Howard Moore and friend of Crosby, was another of our American comrades. He arrived one afternoon unexpectedly at the League’s office, with a letter of introduction from Crosby. It is often difficult to know what to do with such letters in the presence of their bearer--whether to keep him waiting till the message has been deciphered, or to greet him without knowing fully who he is--but on this occasion a glance at Crosby’s first three words was enough, for I saw: “This is Darrow,” and I knew that Darrow was the author of “Crime and Criminals,” an entirely delightful lecture, brimming over with humour and humanity, which had been delivered to the prisoners of the Chicago County Gaol; and I had heard of him from Crosby as a brilliant and successful advocate, who had devoted his genius not to the quest of riches or fame, but to the cause of the poor and the accused. It _was_ Darrow; and as I looked into a face in which strength and tenderness were wonderfully mingled, the formalities of first acquaintance seemed to be mercifully dispensed with, and I felt as if I had known him for years. Since that time Darrow has become widely known in America by his pleadings in the Haywood and other Labour trials, and more recently through the McNamara case. He is the author of several very remarkable works. His _Farmington_ is a fascinating book of reminiscences, and _An Eye for an Eye_ the most impressive story ever written on the subject of the death-penalty.

Let me now pass to a very different champion of our cause. In connection with the _Humanitarian_, the _Humane Review_, and the League’s publications in general, I received a number of letters from “Ouida,” written mostly on that colossal notepaper which her handwriting required, some of them so big that the easiest way to read them was to pin them on the wall and then stand back as from a picture. Her large vehement nature showed itself not only in the passionate wording of these protests against cruelties of various kinds, but in her queer errors in detail, and in the splendid carelessness with which the envelopes were often addressed. One much-travelled wrapper, directed wrongly, and criss-crossed with postmarks and annotations, I preserved as a specimen of the tremendous tests to which the acumen of the Post Office was subjected by her.

Ouida was often described as “fanatical;” but though her views were certainly announced in rather unmeasured terms, I found her reasonable when any error or exaggeration was pointed out. Her sincerity was beyond question; again and again she lent us the aid of her pen, and as the press was eager to accept her letters, she was a valuable ally, though through all that she wrote there ran that pessimistic tone which marked her whole attitude to modern life. Whatever her place in literature, she was a friend of the oppressed and a hater of oppression, and her name deserves to be gratefully remembered for the burning words which she spoke on behalf of those who could not speak for themselves.

It was always a cause of pride to the Humanitarian League that its principles were broad enough to win the support of thoughtful and feeling men, without regard to differences of character or of opinion upon other subjects. A striking instance of this catholicity was seen on an occasion when the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes was lecturing before the League on the attitude of Nonconformists towards Humanitarianism, and Mr. G. W. Foote, editor of the _Freethinker_, and President of the National Secular Society, was present in the audience; for Mr. Price Hughes and Mr. Foote had been engaged in a very bitter personal controversy concerning the alleged conversion of a certain “atheist shoemaker.” When Mr. Foote rose to take part in the discussion, I noticed a sudden look of concern on the face of the lecturer, as he whispered to me: “Is that Mr. Foote?” expecting doubtless a recrudescence of hostilities; but on the neutral, or rather the universal ground of humanitarianism, hostilities could not be; and questions bearing on the subject of the lecture were courteously asked and answered by antagonists who, however sharply at variance on other questions, were in their humanity at one.

Looking back over a large period of the League’s work, I can think of no one who gave us more constant proofs of friendship than Mr. Foote; and his testimony was the more welcome because of the very high and rare intellectual powers which he wielded. Few men of his time combined in equal degree such gifts of brain and heart. I have heard no public speaker who had the faculty of going so straight to the core of a subject--of recapturing and restoring, as it were, to the attention of an audience that jewel called “the point,” on which all are supposed to be intent, but which seems so fatally liable to be mislaid. It was always an intellectual treat to hear him speak; and though, owing to religious prejudices, his public reputation as thinker and writer was absurdly below his deserts he had the regard of George Meredith and others who were qualified to judge, and the enthusiastic support of his followers. All social reformers, whether they acknowledge it or not, owe a debt of gratitude to iconoclasts like Bradlaugh and Foote, who made free speech possible where it was hardly possible before.

Mr. Passmore Edwards, renowned as a philanthropist, was another of our supporters; indeed, he once proposed indirectly, through a friend, that he should be elected President of the League; but this suggestion we did not entertain, because, though we valued his appreciation, we were anxious to keep clear of all ceremonious titles and “figure-heads” that might possibly compromise our freedom of action. Perhaps, too, we were a little piqued by an artless remark which Mr. Edwards had made to the Rev. J. Stratton, who was personally intimate with him: “It is for the League to do the small things, Mr. Stratton. Leave the great things to me.” None the less, Mr. Edwards remained on most friendly terms with the League; and when the Warden of the Passmore Edwards Settlement curtly requested us not to send him any more of our “circulars,” Mr. Edwards expressed his surprise and regret, and added these words: “If the Passmore Edwards Settlement does as much good [as the Humanitarian League] in proportion to the means at its disposal, I shall be abundantly satisfied.”

Two other friends I must not leave unmentioned. Mr. W. J. Stillman’s delightful story of his pet squirrels, _Billy and Hans_, was the most notable of the many charming things written by him in praise of that humaneness which, to him, was identical with religion. A copy of the book which he gave me, and which I count among my treasures, bears marks of having been nibbled on the cover. “The signature of my Squirrels,” Mr. Stillman had written there. I value no autograph more than that of Billy or Hans.

Mr. R. W. Trine used often to visit the League when he was in London. He had an extraordinary aptitude for re-stating unpopular truths in a form palatable to the public; and his _Every Living Creature_, which was practically a Humanitarian League treatise in a new garb, has had a wide circulation. Mr. Trine, many years ago, asked me to recommend him to a London publisher with a view to an English edition of his _In Tune with the Infinite_; and I have it as a joke against my friend Mr. Ernest Bell that when I mentioned the proposal to him he at first looked grave and doubtful. Eventually he arranged matters with Mr. Trine, and I do not think his firm has had reason to regret it, for the book has sold by hundreds of thousands.