To simply bring a horse, a dog, a cat, or even an elephant or camel on the stage as part of the atmosphere or machinery of a play, treating it with the kindness that is invariable I believe in such cases, is one thing, and I by no means object to it. But the deliberate training and use, for the purpose of making a living out of them, of numbers of animals, taking them from place to place, hall to hall, suitable or unsuitable, is a very different “proposition,” as Americans would say. The very nature of it invites suffering. And I do not well see how any amount of inspection and the granting of licences is going to do away with the greater part of a wretchedness that comes from forcing creatures away from more or less natural to highly unnatural conditions of life; nor can I see how, for the purpose of granting licences, satisfactory evidence is ever going to be obtained that training (which is and must be quite a private affair between trainer and animal) is not accompanied by cruelty. In a word, I would like to see the “animal show” abolished in this country. It is too ironical altogether that our love of beasts should make us tolerate and even enjoy what our common sense, when we let it loose, tells us must, in the main, spell misery for the creatures we profess to be so fond of. (2) (A Speech made at Kensington Town Hall, 1913.) I am here to say a very few words on the whole question of the treatment of animals by our civilized selves. For I have no special knowledge, like some who will speak to you, of the training of performing animals; I have only a certain knowledge of human and animal natures, and a common sense which tells me that wild animals are more happy in freedom than in captivity—domestic animals more happy as companions than as clowns. And, quite apart from the definite question of inhumanity, it is perfectly clear to me that these animal shows are among the many surviving evidences, the lingering symptoms, of a creed that—thank Heaven!—is beginning to pass, and must pass, from us. That creed said: We human beings have the right, for our pleasure, convenience, and distraction, to disregard, in the matter of dumb creatures, those principles which our religion, morality, and education fix as the guiding stars of our conduct towards human beings. (Please note that I do not touch on the question of our rights over dumb creatures in so far as our actual self-preservation is concerned; I limit my words to pleasure, convenience, profit, and distraction.)