WILD MEN AND WILD BEASTS 215 



in ship-loads ; nor is internecine tribal warfare permitted. 

 There survive neither Mahdis nor Kaliphas to massacre 

 them by the million. Disease is by way of being checked, 

 and so, in time, will the risk of recurring famine be re- 

 duced. Each and all these benefits they owe to British 

 rule. There will be nothing unreasonable if, in due time, 

 we require a measure of reciprocity and part-payment of 

 the debt by insisting on the savages treating the game 

 (as they are treated themselves) with consideration not 

 to say with mercy. 



Game-laws, we know, have appeared to some tub- 

 thumpers a sort of Anathema Maranatha in the past. 

 That, however, was when horizons were limited by the 

 immaterial fact that, in our bits of islands, there was 

 neither game enough nor ground enough to "go round." 

 But game-laws, when all is said and done, have always 

 been a first footstep towards progress in savage lands ; 

 and will outlast all prejudice in the civilised. For game 

 are God's creatures and (subject to rational control and 

 to the prior rights of mankind) have an inherent and 

 indefeasible right to live. 



A NOTE ON GAME-PRESERVATION 



A deadly danger to game perhaps the deadliest of 

 any (since the implication is subtle) is to admit any 

 sort of confusion between the terms Game and "Meat" 

 Once allow these to become synonymous, once allow the 

 practice (for some paltry economy) of feeding native 

 troops on "meat" meaning Game and the death- 

 warrant of that game is signed for ever. Consider what 

 such a practice involves. Squads of semi-savage natives 

 blood-thirsty by nature, totally unversed in the ethics 

 of sport or in its most elementary laws, scarce knowing 

 one beast from another are sent afield to procure 

 "meat." Result: A reckless, barbarous fusillade, indis- 

 criminate file-firing up to impossible ranges, neither sex 



