Mr. Howard Williams, on the other hand, was as pronounced a rationalist as Maitland was a mystic, and one who by word and by pen, in private and in public, was a quiet but untiring champion of the humanitarian cause. His _Ethics of Diet_, which had the honour, at a later date, of being highly commended by Tolstoy, whose essay entitled “The First Step” was written as a preface to his Russian translation of the book, is a veritable mine of knowledge, which ranges over every period of history and covers not only the subject of humane dietetics but the whole field of man’s attitude toward the non-human races: if Ethical Societies were intended to be anything more than places of debate, they would long ago have included this work among their standard text-books. For the writing of such a treatise, Mr. Williams was specially qualified by the fact that with a wide classical knowledge he united in a remarkable degree the newer spirit and enthusiasm of humanity; he was in the truest sense a student and professor of _literæ humaniores_. It is difficult to estimate precisely the result of labours such as his; but that they have had an appreciable influence upon the growth of a more humane public opinion is not to be doubted. The Committee was gradually strengthened by the inclusion of such experienced workers as the Rev. J. Stratton, Colonel W. Lisle B. Coulson, Mrs. L. T. Mallet, Mr. J. Frederick Green, Miss Elizabeth Martyn, the first secretary of the League, and Mr. Ernest Bell, a member of the well-known publishing firm and now President of the Vegetarian Society, who for over twenty years was a bulwark of strength as chairman and treasurer. A campaign against the Royal Buckhounds had at once commanded respect; the pamphlets were well noticed in the press--better, perhaps, in those days, when they were still a novelty, than later, when they were taken as a matter of course--some successful meetings were held, and the general interest shown in the League’s doings was out of all proportion to its numerical strength.