79 



But an even more important point may be at issue here. We .are, 

 after all^ not just talking about extinction and endangered species 

 here. The voice of the new army to which I have referred is loud and 

 clear on this subject. It does not matter how many of an animal or 

 sea mammal there is. What really matters is the total immorality and 

 senselessness of taking any such creatures for such a frivolous pur- 

 pose. For that great and noble creature, the whale, from which we get 

 not one single product which could not be better gotten elsewhere, 

 man has reserved one of the crudest deaths of all. That tiny, inoffen- 

 ive creature, the baby seal, man chooses to club. And for what? Not 

 even for a fur coat — for a fur lining. 



Mr. Chairman, I have stood in 30-degree-below-zero weather on an 

 ice floe off the Magdalen Islands, in a 50-mile-an-hour wind. It was 

 a wild, eerie scene, of quiet and white nothingness. A winter wonder- 

 land so beautiful that the beauty, let alone the cold, took your breath 

 away. 



The only inhabitants of that ice floe, and indeed of all the other 

 ice floes for miles and miles around, were thousands upon thousands 

 of seals. Two by two they were — a beautiful, gray-coated mother be- 

 side her unbelievably appealing pup ; a fat, fluffy ball of solid white- 

 ness out of which appeared three somber black blobs, two of them 

 eyes, trusting and friendly, the third an inquisitive snout. 



The age of the pup ? Six days. And then the men from the sealing 

 ships advanced. At the last moment a baby seal moved toward them. 

 He seemed to think the first human being he had ever seen come 

 close to him was something to play with, and in friendly, curious 

 fashion, he wiggled forward — waggling, since he had no tail, his 

 whole backside. 



Mr. Chairman, all that remains of him now is the lining of your 

 glove, or perhaps of your jacket, or even your billfold. And all of 

 this, of course, could be better made of something else. 



May I say in closing that the animal army of which I speak is 

 today such an overwhelming majority that I venture to say you can- 

 not find a single soul in this hall, in this building, in the streets below, 

 or in the entire country, who does not want to do something about 

 whales, about seals, and sea lions, unless, and I repeat, unless, it is 

 someone with a vested interest in their persecution. 



And that, Mr. Chairman, is my final point here. Up until now, the 

 U.S. Government has had a vested interest in this persecution, in one 

 of the crudest busmesses on the face of the earth, the clubbing of 

 seals. Sir, it must divest itself of this vested interest. It must divest 

 itself, wash the blood from its hands, and stand in fair and new and 

 fresh and decent judgment. 



Mr. Chairman, we ask of our Government in this matter, as so many 

 people are asking in so many other matters, that it be not on the side 

 of the angles, but on the side of the angels. The Government has two 

 arguments. It says it has to kill seals because of a treaty. That is one 

 argument. The other is that it has to kill seals because it is good 

 conservation. 



Mr. Chairman, I am always suspicious of someone who has two 

 arguments. If one of the arguments was really good, why w^ould two 

 be necessary ? Not long ago I asked an official in the Bureau of Com- 

 merical Fisheries if the seal killing would go on for conservation 



