birds are worth preserving for their beauty, and their value as
living neighbors to man, from that moment there is hope for the saving
of the Remnant. That will indeed be the beginning of a new era, of a
millennium in fact, in the preservation of wild life. It will then be
easy to enact laws for ten-year close seasons on whole groups of
species. Think what it would mean for such a close season to be enacted
for all the grouse of the United States, all the shore-birds of the
United States, or the wild turkey wherever found!

To-day, the great--indeed, the _only_--opponents of long close seasons
on game birds are the gunners. Whenever and wherever you introduce a
bill to provide such a season, you will find that this is true. The gun
clubs and the Downtrodden Hunters' and Anglers' Protective Associations
will be quick to go after their representatives, and oppose the bill.
And state senators and assemblymen will think very hard and with strong
courage before they deliberately resolve to do their duty regardless of
the opposition of "a large body of sportsmen,"--men who have votes, and
who know how to take revenge on lawmakers who deprive them of their
"right" to kill. The greatest speech ever made in the Mexican Congress
was uttered by the member who solemnly said: "I rise to sacrifice
ambition to honor!"

Unfortunately, the men who shoot have become possessed of the idea that
they have certain inherent, God-given "rights" to kill game! Now, as a
matter of fact, a sportsman with a one-hundred-dollar Fox gun in his
hands, a two-hundred-dollar dog at his heels and five one-hundred-dollar
bills in his pocket has no more "right" to kill a covey of quail on Long
Island than my milkman has to elect that it shall be let alone for the
pleasure of his children! The time has come when the people who don't
shoot must do one of two things:

1. They must demonstrate the fact that they have rights in the wild
creatures, and demand their recognition, or

2. See the killable game all swept off the continent by the Army of
Destruction.

Really, it is to me very strange that gunners never care to save game
birds on account of their beauty. One living bob white on a fence is
better than a score in a bloody game-bag. A live squirrel in a tree is
poetry in motion; but on the table a squirrel is a rodent that tastes as
a rat smells. Beside the ocean a flock of sandpipers is needed to
complete the beautiful picture; but on the table a sand