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The only magazine devoted to the Animals' cause, which speaks

out fearlessly against all forms of cruelty.

Price 2d.; Post free for one year, 2s. 6d.

THE ANIMALS' FRIEND:

A Humane Monthly Magazine, containing Articles, Notes, and News on all
Subjects connected with the Humane Treatment of Animals.

Well Illustrated. With Supplement for Children.

EDITED BY ERNEST BELL.

ANNUAL VOLUME FOR 1907, WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, PRICE 2s. 6d. YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, LONDON.

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ANTI-BEARING-REIN ASSOCIATION.

bon. Secretary:

ERNEST BELL, York House, Portugal Street, London.

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Hon. Secretary: MR. HENRY S. SALT.

Hon. Treasurer and Chairman: MR. ERNEST BELL.

AIMS AND OBJECTS.

THE Humanitarian League has been established to enforce the principle that it is iniquitous to inflict avoidable suffering on any sentient being. This principle the League will apply and emphasise in those cases where it appears to be most flagrantly overlooked, and will protest not only against the cruelties inflicted by men on men, in the name of law, authority, and conventional usage, but also, in accordance with the same sentiment of humanity, against the wanton ill-treatment of the lower animals.

Among the reforms advocated by the Humanitarian League the following are prominent :

A thorough revision and more humane administration of the Criminal Law and Prison System, with a view to the institution of a Court of Criminal Appeal, the discontinuance of the death penalty and corporal punishment, and an acceptance of the principle of reclamation instead of revenge in the treatment of offenders.

The establishment of public hospitals under municipal control, where experimentation on patients shall be impossible. The complete abandonment of the medical tyranny which would enforce vaccination by fines or imprisonment.

The extension of the principle of International Arbitration, and the gradual reduction of armaments.

A more considerate treatment of subject races in our Colonies.

A more vigorous application of the existing laws for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and an extension of these laws for the protection of wild animals as well as domestic.

Prohibition of the torture of animals by Vivisection in the alleged interests of

science.

Insistence on the immorality of all so-called " sports" which seek amusement in the death or suffering of animals. Legislative action in the case of the most degraded of such sports.

The prevention, by the encouragement of a humaner diet, of the suffering to which animals are subjected in cattle-ships and slaughter-houses; and, as an initial measure, the substitution of well-inspected public abattoirs for the present system of private butchery.

An exposure of the many cruelties inflicted, at the dictates of Fashion, in the fur and feather trade.

Recognition of the urgent need of humaner education, to impress on the young the duty of thoughtfulness and fellow-feeling for all sentient beings.

In brief, the distinctive purpose of the Humanitarian League is to consolidate and give consistent expression to the principle of humaneness, and to show that Humanitarianism is not merely a kindly sentiment, a product of the heart rather than of the brain, but an essential portion of any intelligible system of ethics or

social science.

N.B.-The condition of Membership is the acceptance of the general principle (not necessarily of the complete programme) set forth above. The minimum annual subscription is half a crown, entitling the subscriber to receive THE HUMANITARIAN monthly.

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In a certain thirteenth-century triptych there is one panel representing a sinner condemned from the judgmentseat to eternal torment. The striking thing in this picture is not the image of the Deity, nor the figure of the poor terrified prisoner; but the artist's presentment of the pair of devils standing by, waiting for their prey.

These creatures are grotesque if you will: but with a grotesqueness at one with their horror-a grotesqueness which moves to shudders, not to laughter. The imagination of the limner triumphs over faults in execution, over the cracking and fading of the poor pigments. He must have felt an intense fear of these beings, for they still awaken fear in the beholder. He must have hated them bitterly, he has made them so superbly hideous. They are of a vile sombre colour-not black, nor grey, nor brown, but somewhat the hue of city mud. They have long twisted tails, cocked-up ears, hoofs, claws on their hands, trailing, sharp-pointed, prickly wings. Looking at these last one can hear them scrape against whatsoever they touch; one can see the curved claws pulse in and out. But the most awful thing about these creatures, whose absurdity is so wondrously overshadowed by their horror, is the intentness with which they are watching their victim. They stand tense, their jaws protruding: one

VOL. IX.

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fancies that a quiver of expectation runs through their distorted limbs: every bit of their being is absorbed in awaiting the signal to fall on the lost soul and bear him away.

These two demons typify the hunting instinct. The picture is a great hunting scene, and they are in at the death. People are fond of laughing at the tail, the cloven hoof, and pointed ears of the medieval fiend; but it was a true inspiration which prompted this artist to paint his evil spirits so vulgarly, ridiculously ugly. If you do not realise that evil and ugliness are identical-that the manifestations of evil are as crudely hideous as Bunyan's Apollyon, or Spenser's unmasked Duessa, or a Socialist cartoonist's drawing of "Capital"—you do not really hate evil. There is nothing more evil than this hunting instinct this desire to kill; there is nothing uglier than its manifestations.

I do not mean to imply that sportsmen and butchers have cloven hoofs and long tails, nor even that they will acquire these adjuncts in time. These devils in the picture are extreme types: they are possessed by the preying instinct pure and simple, with no human feelings to counterbalance it. But precisely the same look as the genius of the painter has put into their tense figures and cruel faces may be seen in the figures and faces of men and women who have acquired a certain amount of skill in taking life-precisely the same in kind, of course; much less in degree.

No greater mistake could be made than the modern one of depicting the great hunter of souls as a suave, cultured person. The wisdom of the ancients made them perceive that it was impossible for the devil to be a gentleman or a man of taste. Ahriman was represented as the Vandal par excellence-the Vandal who sought to destroy the beauty and completeness of Ormuzd's egg. Ormuzd who was the artist, the person of culture and good taste. We have so twisted this truth that nowadays

It was

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