Holidays in Heck by P. J. O’Rourke Page B

her litter of pups covered in shards of glass.”
    Several of the other guests hunted foxes as well as stags. This was Thursday night. There was a big fox hunt on Saturday, and Sunday was Easter. Conversation turned to how to get Easter shopping done. Shopping on Good Friday wasa bit inappropriate, wasn’t it? (There are no atheists in fox hunts.)
    The fox hunts were doing all right since the hunting ban. They’d taken up “drag hunting.” Someone rides ahead pulling cloth soaked in fox scent behind him. The hounds and the hunters follow his course. And if an actual fox pops up along the way . . . well, who can blame the dogs? Ninety-one foxes were killed on the first day of the hunting ban. But what will the country pub of the future be named? “The Something That Smells Like a Fox and Hounds”?
    Did the antis have, I asked, any moral point? Yes, a great point—of moral vanity. God didn’t make the world good enough for them. Cheese was served. Port was passed. Adrian quoted Surtees: “It’s the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt, and only five-and-twenty percent its danger.”
    In a nearly identical cultivated, sonorous voice Michael Hobday, spokesman for the League Against Cruel Sports, answered my questions a week later in London. The League Against Cruel Sports was founded in 1924, with antecedents dating to Hogarth’s
The Four Stages of Cruelty
. Here are a few of the League’s past presidents: Edith Sitwell, Lord Grey de Ruthyn, the Rt. Hon. Earl of Listowel, the Reverend Lord Soper. And a brochure published by the League shows how long and deep is the controversy in Britain about man and his relationship with the animals that are his friends, his relatives, and his dinner. In 1822 Britain passed a law against improper treatment of cattle, the first animal-welfare legislation in history. In 1835 Britain outlawed dogfighting, cockfighting, and bull, bear, and badger baiting. In 1929 the Labour Party adopted a platform plankopposing blood sports (although it held four parliamentary majorities before it fulfilled that campaign promise). “There’s a long history of criticism of hunting,” Mr. Hobday said. “The people who established the League Against Cruel Sports had a background in the humanitarian movement—animal suffering, welfare of children, prohibition.”
    I didn’t ask if the humanitarian movement had trouble prioritizing. I did ask, “Why the focus on hunting rather than, say, factory farming, with its animal penitentiaries?”
    â€œThe reasons are twofold,” Mr. Hobday said. “Firstly, foxhunting is an emotive issue. The sight of the blood and gore tugs at the heartstrings. It makes powerful television. Secondly,” Mr. Hobday said, “hunting is done for entertainment. It’s a sport.”
    I asked why the law permitted hunting rabbits but not hares.
    â€œThe League’s view is that cruelty to any animal in the name of sport is wrong. Parliament’s view was to make a distinction between activities that were ‘necessary’ and activities that were undertaken for sport. The Countryside Alliance has a vested interest in pointing out loopholes.”
    The Countryside Alliance is the principal British pro-hunting group. Apparently both the League and the Alliance enjoy majority support among the British public. According to a 1997 Gallup poll for
The Daily Telegraph,
80 percent of Britons disapproved of hunting foxes with hounds. According to a 2004 ICM poll for
The Sunday Telegraph,
70 percent of Britons believed the police should not enforce the hunting ban.
    I wanted to know why hunting (that is, chasing animals with dogs) was banned but shooting (pointing or flushing animals with dogs) wasn’t.
    â€œWith shooting,” Mr. Hobday said, “there are clear steps that people can take to minimize suffering.”
    Being a better shot was the only one I could think