308 THE ETHICAL KINSHIP 



conqueror contemplates his ' captives,' the robber 

 his ' spoil,' or the savage his ' scalps.' If before 

 the eyes and in the mind of each individual who 

 sits unconcernedly down to a parsleyed 'steak' 

 could rise the facts in the biography of that 

 ' steak ' the happy heifer on the far western 

 meadows, the fateful day when she is forced by 

 the drover's whip from her home,* the arduous 

 'drive' to the village and her baffled efforts to 

 escape, the crowding into cars and the long, 

 painful journey, the silent heartaches and the 

 low, pitiful moans, the terrible hunger and thirst 

 and cold, her arrival, bruised and bewildered, in 

 the city, her dazed mingling with others, the great 

 murder-house, the prods and bellowings, the 

 treacherous crash of the brain-axe, the death drop 

 and shudder, the butcher's knife, the gush of blood 

 from her pretty throat, and the glassy gaze of her 

 dead but beautiful eyes there would be, in spite of 

 the inherent hardness of the human heart, a great 

 drawing back from those acts which render such 

 fearful things necessary. If human beings could 

 only realise what the hare suffers, or the stag, when 

 it is pursued by dogs, horses, and men bent on 

 taking its life, or what the fish feels when it is 

 thrust through and flung into suffocating gases, 



* I have many times seen cows chased all over their native 

 premises, round and round, through fields and barnyards, 

 across streams and over fences chased until the poor things 

 were utterly exhausted, and whipped and beaten until their 

 faces and backs were covered with wounds before they 

 could be compelled to leave for ever the old farm where they 

 had been born and raised. 



