The League had the satisfaction of seeing the Jewish system strongly condemned in the official report (1904) of the Committee appointed to consider the Humane Slaughtering of Animals; but nothing has yet been done to carry the recommendations of that Committee into effect, the supposed sanctity of a “religious” usage having been allowed, as usual, to outweigh the clearest dictates of humaneness. There are not a few other current and strongly-rooted practices to which the title of this chapter might justly be applied; but enough has now been said to show that the merry month of May, in the year of grace 1640, did not witness, as has been supposed, quite the last instance of the infliction of Torture in this favoured land of the free. XI HUNNISH SPORTS AND FASHIONS Half ignorant, they turn’d an easy wheel, That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel. KEATS. From the subject of torture we pass naturally to that of sport; indeed, it is difficult to separate them, for they are psychologically and actually akin. There is undoubtedly an element of sport in the gloating over savage punishments, and some of the sufferings which sportsmen inflict, such as the hunting to death of a timid deer or hare, cannot fairly be distinguished from torture. But when I speak of “sport” in this connection, I mean of course _blood-sport_; not the manly games of playing-field or river, but the quest for personal recreation at the expense of pain to others. The term “blood-sports” was first used, as far as I am aware, by Mr. John Macdonald, who, under the name of “Meliorist,” was the author of some suggestive articles that appeared in the _Echo_; anyhow, the Humanitarian League borrowed the word from him, and finding that it “went home,” made a point of using it on every possible occasion. It is the right and proper expression for the practices which it connotes. The League published in 1914 a volume of essays on _Killing for Sport_, with Preface by Mr. Bernard Shaw, in which the various aspects of blood-sports were for the first time fully set forth and examined from the standpoint of ethics and economics: the book, in fact, formed a summary of the League’s arraignment of certain bloody and barbarous pastimes, just as _The Flogging Craze_ was a record of its protests against the continued use of the lash. I will here mention only a few of the more salient features of a long campaign.