>>21897346We are conscious of the practical difficulties one would meet in organizing
even a far more limited human society than the present-day one on such lines and
in such a spirit as this. But we believe that it is better to try to overcome those
difficulties, if necessary to face a bitter struggle for the welfare of all creatures and
for the cleansing of humanity from an age-long shame, rather than to remain
indifferent to all the cruelties involved in the exploitation of animals. We believe
one should at least do one’s best to make men conscious of the amount of
barbarity tolerated by most organized religions in their present state, and to stir in
them the shame of it. One should do one’s best to tell the modern world, craving
for a lasting peace based on international justice and for the end of the exploitation
of man by man, under any form, that man, as a whole, deserves no such justice
and no such peace and no sympathy whatsoever, as long as he tolerates the
existence of slaughterhouses, of the fur industry with all the atrocities it implies,
of scientific experimentation upon living creatures for whatever purpose it be; as
long as hunting parties, bull fights, circuses and exhibitions of caged animals are
not yet an abomination to him; as long, too, as he can witness the life-long hard
labor of the beast of burden without a collective outcry of protest.
That is what we have done, in this book as all through our life.
— Savitri Devi Mukherji
(Begun in Calcutta, in July 1945,
and finished in Lyons, France
on the 29th of March, 1946.)
