BOOKS ON BIG GAME 337 



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olution, deified the chase of the stag, and made it into 

 a highly artificial cult, which they followed to the ex- 

 clusion of State-craft and war-craft and everything else. 

 James, the founder of the ignoble English branch of the 

 Stuart kings, as unkingly a man as ever sat on a throne, 

 was fanatical in his devotion to the artificial kind of chase 

 which then absorbed the souls of the magnates of con- 

 tinental Europe. 



There is no need to exercise much patience with men 

 who protest against field sports, unless, indeed, they are 

 logical vegetarians of the flabbiest Hindoo type. If no 

 deer or rabbits were killed, no crops could be cultivated. 

 If it is morally right to kill an animal to eat its body, 

 then it is morally right to kill it to preserve its head. A 

 good sportsman will not hesitate as to the relative value 

 he puts upon the two, and to get the one he will go a long 

 time without eating the other. No nation facing the un- 

 healthy softening and relaxation of fibre which tend to 

 accompany civilization can afford to neglect anything 

 that will develop hardihood, resolution, and the scorn of 

 discomfort and danger. But if sport is made an end in- 

 stead of a means, it is better to avoid it altogether. The 

 greatest stag-hunter of the seventeenth century was the 

 Elector of Saxony. During the Thirty Years' War he 

 killed some 80,000 deer and boar. Now, if there ever 

 was a time when a ruler needed to apply himself to 

 serious matters, it was during the Thirty Years' War in 

 Germany, and if the Elector in question had eschewed 

 hunting he might have compared more favorably with 

 Gustavus Adolphus in his own generation, or the Great 



