whether an animal killed at Christmas has had a better or
a worse time than it would have had if there had been no Christmas or no
Christmas dinners. But I do know that the fighting and suffering
brotherhood to which I belong and owe everything, Mankind, would have a
much worse time if there were no such thing as Christmas or Christmas
dinners. Whether the turkey which Scrooge gave to Bob Cratchit had
experienced a lovelier or more melancholy career than that of less
attractive turkeys is a subject upon which I cannot even conjecture.
But that Scrooge was better for giving the turkey and Cratchit happier
for getting it I know as two facts, as I know that I have two feet. What
life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of
Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business. Nothing shall induce
me to darken human homes, to destroy human festivities, to insult human
gifts and human benefactions for the sake of some hypothetical knowledge
which Nature curtained from our eyes. We men and women are all in the
same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic
loyalty. If we catch sharks for food, let them be killed most
mercifully; let any one who likes love the sharks, and pet the sharks,
and tie ribbons round their necks and give them sugar and teach them to
dance. But if once a man suggests that a shark is to be valued against a
sailor, or that the poor shark might be permitted to bite off a nigger's
leg occasionally; then I would court-martial the man--he is a traitor to
the ship.

And while I take this view of humanitarianism of the anti-Christmas
kind, it is cogent to say that I am a strong anti-vivisectionist. That
is, if there is any vivisection, I am against it. I am against the
cutting-up of conscious dogs for the same reason that I am in favour of
the eating of dead turkeys. The connection may not be obvious; but that
is because of the strangely unhealthy condition of modern thought. I am
against cruel vivisection as I am against a cruel anti-Christmas
asceticism, because they both involve the upsetting of existing
fellowships and the shocking of normal good feelings for the sake of
something that is intellectual, fanciful, and remote. It is not a human
thing, it is not a humane thing, when you see a poor woman staring
hungrily at a bloater, to think, not of the obvious feelings of the
woman, but of the unimaginable feelings of the deceased bloater.
Similarly, it is not h