But the leaders of smaller societies have two grounds of complaint against Mr. Coleridge's society: they do not believe in his policy, and they will not submit to his "discipline." They call his society "the weak-kneed brethren," and say that its policy is "miserable, cowardly, and misleading"; and they take it ill that he so often accuses them of inaccuracy. He refers again and again (see the official journal of the National Society) to this mode of discipline:-- _December 1901._--"I decline to be made responsible for the 'anti-vivisection party.' There happen to be small anti-vivisection associations whose chief occupation is the dissemination of quite inaccurate pamphlets. I have nothing to do with them, and cannot prevent anything they choose to do." _January 1902._--"Time after time has this sacred cause been undermined and betrayed by its professing friends by their reckless habit of making erroneous statements." _March 1902._--"I am quite aware that with many of my opponents in the exclusive total-abolition coterie, the motives that actuate them are far removed from the question of the salvation of the wretched animals, and have their foundation in emotions that seem to me singularly unworthy and petty." _May 1902._--"As representative of the National Society, I have again and again written to the representatives of some of the smaller anti-vivisection societies, protesting in plain terms against their publication of inaccurate statements." No society could submit to be thus taken to task four times in six months. The Church League writes to him, "What the Church League may or may not think fit to say does not in the very least concern you, who are not a member of the League. Interference in such a matter from an outsider is an obvious impertinence." Such rejoinders are met, in their turn, by angry leaders, "A Stab in the Back," "Stabs in the Back," in the National Society's official journal; and the Hon. Secretary of the London Society, who is a lady, is accused of want of chivalry for Mr. Coleridge. The leader, "A Stab in the Back" (April 1902), is a curious instance of the tone of one anti-vivisection society toward another:--