BULL-FIGHTING AND CRUELTY [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR, —The
review in a recent Spectator of a biography of a celebrated bull-fighter contains no single hint of condemnation of his pastime. The one faint suggestion that such a book may not be acceptable to quite all your readers lies in the mild remark that it is " clearly not intended for humani- tarians."
But is " humanity " nowadays practised by a special group of people ? Are humanitarians a class apart ? My guess is that the majority of your readers are " humanitarians," differing only in the varying degrees of logical completeness,with which they apply their principles 'but ninety-nine out of a hundred of them deploring bull-fighting.
We seem at present in danger of cultivating a new affectation —that of a perverse appreciation of all that, during centuries of slow moral progress, our forefathers came gradually to disdain and discard.
The question raised by your admiring review of the life of a matador is; " Can skill redeem cruelty ? " If I invent a dangerous and difficult way of torturing an animal, and then
face the dangers and surmotint the difficulties, have I passed from the condition of torturing to that of ".artistic achieve- ment " (the latter being your reviewer's term, which, to one at least, of your readers, is just plain cant) ?
And if the skill with which the bull is tortured by some strange transmutation becomes " artistic achievement " may not the horses who notoriously suffer abominably, still indig- nantly ask, " Where do we come in ? "—Yours faithfully,
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