To turn to another side of the same question. In a different way the bullfight is responsible for an amount of moral degradation that no one but a Spaniard can adequately estimate. It is not only that the spectacle of broken-down horses gored to death and a wild beast worried for half an hour at a stretch is in itself debasing, but the whole atmosphere created by the amusement is thoroughly vicious and degrading. This is not merely my private opinion: I repeat what has been told me by cultured and thoughtful Spaniards, who see in its popularity one of the many obstacles to the growth of a higher standard of morality. Happily there are indications that the taste for the sport is on the wane. I know numerous members of the upper middle class and many working people, both men and women, who object strongly to the institution, and never attend a bullfight, and bullrings have been closed in many of the smaller towns during the last ten years or so, for want of support. But the vested interests--the cattle-breeders who make their living by breeding the bulls, the impresarios who get up the shows, the companies who have invested millions of pesetas in building bullring’s, the thousands of men employed in them in various capacities, and the bull-fighters themselves--form together a very powerful combination with a good deal of political influence, and it will be many years yet before this blot on civilisation disappears.[29] One deplorable fact connected with the bullfights is the extent to which they are patronised by foreign visitors, and of these the English are among the worst offenders. I have been told, though I cannot vouch for the truth of the statement, that one bullring close to Gibraltar is practically kept going by the English spectators, and that but for their support it would be closed. I know that Englishmen and English women, in scores and hundreds, every year, some of them ardent supporters at home of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, make a point, when they come to Spain, of going to see the show. “No, I daresay I shan’t like it,” they will say, “but when one is in Spain it is one of the things one ought to see.” Let us hope that they do not realise that their example goes to make the task of the Spanish social reformers even more up-hill and heart-breaking than it need be. I may instance an University professor who was wearing himself out in the endeavour to raise the moral and intellectual standard of his pupils. He himself was educated in England, and had the highest respect for English customs and institutions and for the general code of English honour. He told me that he had lain awake all one night trying to find a reply to his lads when they said: “If the English, whom you hold up to us as an example in so many ways, support the bullfight, there can be no reason why we should condemn it.”