The beating heart

“Here, Jenkins, take this animal!” And the body of the dog from which one foreleg had been cut away was thrown into the arms of the new laboratory attendant.

The dog was screaming wildly and some of its blood splashed upon Jenkin’s white smock frock and some into his no less white face. The great scientist Sir Charles Smith-Brown Bart. Dsc. F.R.C.S. etc., etc., was at work in his laboratory and his new attendant was assisting him.

It was Sunday morning and the Great Man was rather afraid he might be made late for church by the bungling slowness of his subordinate.

“Throw him into the trough, man, don’t stand there staring and clamp down his paws so that he can’t move, the three he’s got left anyway,” he added with a little chuckle. Sir Charles was always cheerful and pleasant at his work. Jenkins turned, lowered the dog into the trough on his back and taking each leg fastened it into the iron clamp provided on each side. The dog was screaming in agony and Jenkins’ fingers trembled as he did the clamps and turned his head away that he might not see the beseeching terror in the animal’s eyes. It did not seem right somehow. He had fed the little spaniel last night and thought what a jolly little beast it was, frisking round him, and caressing him with its soft nose and tongue. This Sunday morning’s work did not seem right to him, but then he was a new hand, only having been engaged last night and having had his duties described to him as “the care of animals.”

“Now then have you got him fixed?” asked the great man, coming up behind him, with a keen looking knife in his hand. With this he pointed to the dog’s head.

“Bind his jaws and clamp the head, that’s right. Now my friend—” the great man leant over the trough in which the dog lay rigid, helpless, extended on its back, its legs clamped to the sides of the trough, wide apart. Jenkins turned away and stared stolidly at the piece of bright blue sky that appeared above the frosted panes of the lower part of the window.

The dog unable to scream with its bound jaws could still moan and a groaning moan of direct agony came to Jenkins’ ears as the great man bent over the trough.

When he looked round he saw there was a great gash all down the chest and stomach, laying bare the inside, and in the open cavity the scientist was fumbling with both hands.

“There now that’ll do for the present,” he said cheerily as he withdrew them, covered with blood, and wiped them briskly on a towel, “I shall have to be off to church now or I shall be late.”

“And what about the dog, Sir?”

“Oh, I’ll leave him like that. I always do. Let ’em cool off a bit you know,” again the pleasant laugh. “Then I’ll have at him again after lunch.”

He was taking off his white smock in which he worked and revealed himself well dressed underneath. He walked to the wash handstand with its fine brass taps and washed his hands carefully. Then he went into the hall outside where his frock-coat and tall hat were hanging. Jenkins followed him eyeing him uneasily.

“Of course, Sir,” he began rather hesitatingly, “I’m new to this kind of work and p’raps I don’t understand it, but isn’t it a bit cruel?”

The great man had slipped on his fine well made coat over his large comfortable self and was just settling above his eyebrows his very polished new silk hat. He looked back pleasantly at the nervous, puckered face of his subordinate.

“My dear Jenkins you decidedly are new to it, very: but I trust you will improve in time.” He took off his pince-nez and held them lightly in one hand, as he was wont to do when addressing a class. “But I don’t like these signs of squeamishness. Now I’ll just ask you a few questions. You don’t know anything about Scientific Research do you?”

“No, Sir,” returned Jenkins humbly.

“Well, then,” pursued his employer genially, “you must remember Scientific Research is a very noble work and that’s what I am doing here, a very noble work,” he repeated, “read the daily papers, they are always saying so.” Here he waved his pince-nez airily and smiled.

Jenkins was not an adept at analysing sarcasm but as he looked at the smiling doctor and heard his pleasant tones, he had a vague idea that the big man was “making game of him.”

“Then another thing is its all for the benefit of humanity. Now remember that, Jenkins, because it’s a useful phrase, the benefit of humanity. I am working for the benefit of humanity. You must get that well in your head. All you saw this morning, all you will see here while you are with me is all for the benefit of humanity, see?”

Jenkins feeling himself confused and baffled by the smiling eyes and suave tones, tried to keep hold of his point.

“Still it is cruel, isn’t it, Sir?” he mumbled.

“Cruel?” repeated the Doctor with a shade of impatience. “Certainly not. Supposing it were cruel what an uproar there would be! You know what a lot of churches there are, all full of God-fearing clergymen, good holy men. Would they allow it if it were cruel? Of course not. They would denounce it in their sermons but they never say a word against it. They uphold it. To-day for instance all the London churches are full of these good men talking themselves hoarse, telling us all what we must not do, but you won’t find one saying we must not pursue our researches.”

“P’raps they don’t know what you are a doin’ of,” blurted out Jenkins and then paused alarmed at what his employer would think of his boldness, but Sir Charles only laughed gently.

“Oh, yes, they do,” he said. “We tell them often enough in our books and our medical papers. But they see the aim, my dear Jenkins, unlike you I am afraid. They see how noble, how important our work is. They see how important, how immensely valuable, how necessary it is, in fact, to humanity, to know that monkeys can have measles!” he broke off laughing and Jenkins felt again the big man was making fun of him. Sir Charles did not seem to mind now being late for church. He was amused at the poor simple ignorant fellow before him and he liked the feeling that he could confuse him with his big words and twist him round his finger.

Jenkins stood blinking for a moment in silence. The little spaniel’s agonised moaning came from the room behind him and filled his ears making a curious undertone to the light banter of the man before him. Sir Charles was a great believer in propaganda and never let go an opportunity of sowing the good seed. He was a little afraid that sooner or later an infuriated populace might turn against him and his colleagues and put a stop to those practices for which now they so meekly and conveniently paid: so seeing Jenkins still appeared somewhat obdurate he continued more seriously.

“Just think a minute. There’s the whole country! England! You love England, don’t you, Jenkins? Fought for it, eh?”

“Yes, Sir, I do,” replied Jenkins fervently. His whole face lighted up.

“Well, now England’s in the forefront of all humanitarian projects. Won’t have bull fights, stopped cock fights, sends men to prison for throwing a cat out of a window, would England allow this work of ours to go on, if it were cruel? No she would stop it. Would she tax her people to give us little gifts of 500,000 pounds for Research if it were cruel? Certainly not. Are you a taxpayer, Jenkins?”

“I must be, Sir. We’re all taxed.”

“Just so. Then here in the laboratory you’ll have the satisfaction of seeing how your money is spent for you. Money, Jenkins, it takes money, the noble work. Sixty thousand animals more or less go through the laboratories every year in England. Expensive ones too, some of them: it takes money, your money, see?” Here the doctor gave his victim a playful little dig in the side. “Now I really must run off. Don’t you bother your head about these things. Just remember what I say that England’s a splendidly humane country and couldn’t allow anything brutal to be done and don’t forget too how awfully important it is to know that monkeys have measles!”

Before his confused listener could make any remark the doctor had walked down the passage, passed through the door and banged it behind him.

Sir Charles walked down the road and across the straggling bit of waste ground that surrounded his laboratory, with a pleased expression on his face. One of his favorite experiments was to batter a dog to death slowly with repeated blows, making notes during the operation, of the time necessary to produce insensibility and the further time to produce actual extinction. It was always an interesting experiment to his highly scientific mind and he felt in some degree as if he had been practicing in the same way on Jenkins’ mind. He thought with a smile it would not take long in his laboratory to batter to death all Jenkins’ funny little ideas about cruelty.

Jenkins, left standing in the hall, remained there as if transfixed. He felt as if the whole thing must be some horrible nightmare and that he would wake up in a minute in his country cottage with the sound of clucking hens outside, instead of that awful moaning from the room behind him.

What sort of hell was this that he had dropped into?

You see Jenkins lacked a scientific education which enables a man to see that black is really white and so on. Jenkins was only just an average ordinary man so he must be excused if Sir Charles’ most beautifully kept and perfectly appointed laboratory with all the latest scientific appliances for giving monkeys measles and kindred noble work, appeared to him a hell.

How had he got into it?

Seeing by chance that scrap of paper and the advertisement that a man was wanted to take charge of animals, he had applied for the place, because he was fond of animals, and got it.

He had arrived last night and been shown his quarters. He had also been shown a room with four healthy happy dogs in it in kennels round the walls. He had been told to feed them and keep them clean which work he had joyfully accepted. The dogs had jumped round him in delight recognizing a friend and he had spent most of his evening with them, cleaning out the kennels which seemed to be old ones that had been used for many occupants before these four had been put into them. His work done he had passed through a passage with closed doors on all sides of him and up the long flight of stairs at the end of it, to his own two rooms, on an upper floor. These seemed cosy enough and he had slept well. In the early morning he had been roused by the unearthly screaming of a dog and fearing some accident had happened to one of his charges, he bolted down to the room where he had left them overnight.

Finding only three scared looking animals there, he had followed the terrible scream down the passage, opened the door that faced him and come straight in on the scene of one of the doctor’s scientific operations. Jenkins being unscientific failed to see any trace of beauty and nobleness in the work before him. He only saw a perspiring man in a blood stained smock holding a dog who was shrieking like a human person in the extreme of pain and terror. He understood nothing, he vaguely thought there must be some accident and his help was needed.

He rushed forward. “Oh, Sir—”

The scientist looked up. His face was working, his eye glaring.

“Damn you, you fool, what do you come here for when I’m at work? Get out. Get out!” he repeated as Jenkins did not stir. “And never come here unless I ring for you.”

Jenkins turned on shaking legs and got out of the room somehow, shutting the door tightly behind him. Then he walked down the passage to the room where the live dogs were, entered and shut that door too and stood with his back against it facing his charges. Yesterday they had jumped up to him. Now they stood still, looking at him askance. Their ears pricked listening to those frightful screams. Then he went into the middle of the room and sat down on a wooden chair and buried his face in his hands with a groan. He couldn’t yet make much head or tail of it all but one thing was certain. The man in the other room was cutting up a dog alive. A dog who had been well and happy last night. It had been taken from among these out of this room and by inference these others were awaiting the same fate. And they knew it: he stretched out his hands to them and after a time they came up to him; not as last night capering and joyous, but cowering and whimpering, sidling up to him pleading for a protection they felt by instinct he could not give. He had put his arms round them and so they sat grouped together the man and the terrified dogs listening to those horrible cries. He did not know how long he sat there but after a time a church bell clanged out a few harsh strokes and after that the doctor’s bell had sounded summoning him to his duties. Now the great man had departed and he was left in the hallway to think over his first lesson in applied Science.

Jenkins was not an educated man, but he had a good clear mind capable of adjusting itself to new situations. He was, besides, what we all understand by a good man. He had those simple sincere rules of conduct that make the useful citizen. He had his own very definite ideas of right and wrong and lived up to them. He thought it was right to pay your way, to help your neighbour whenever possible, to work hard and mind your own business. He thought it wrong to lie, steal or murder, to cheat or injure another in any way, or to abuse the helpless and the weak. That was his simple code and it had served him very well the 38 years of his hard-working life. He saw now chance had flung him into a place where what seemed to him scandalous infamies were carried on and his first impulse was to flee from it, as one would from any plague spot: make a clean bolt of it and forget that such a place existed. But he checked the impulse as cowardly. No, here he was suddenly up against something he did not in the least understand. It was his duty to try to master it and see what it all meant. He perceived very clearly that however gross the evil existing here it was one legally protected and upheld. He remembered he had once called in a policeman to stop a man beating a dog: nothing of that sort would avail here, that was evident. The doctor was quite confident and easy in his mind apparently and while the exterior of the place looked squalid and desolate situated in its ragged waste land, the interior was fitted up with every comfort and even luxury. Electric lights and lamps and telephones were in every room he had seen. Beyond the outlying position, there seemed no special secrecy or concealment about the place: No: somehow or other, he could not think how, but somehow this man was allowed to do what he was doing. Allowed as he had said, by the country, by the laws, by the church, by his fellows, to do these atrocities. His blood boiled within him. Again came the temptation to bolt but the thought of the animals held him. His fighting spirit was up but he could do nothing until he knew more about what sort of a hell he was in. He must explore. He walked down the softly carpeted hallway away from the door, towards the staircase end and opening the first door he came to at the side entered the apartment. It was long and narrow. No carpet here: on the floor only bare tessellated black and white tiles. There were windows high up in the walls: below these ranged against each side of the room were iron cages. The light fell coldly from above and there was a faint foul odour in the air that belied the appearance of aggressive brightness and cleanliness of the whole place. There was a row of iron cages on each side all down the long room and from these rose a continuous low moaning sound which seemed to chill his blood. He looked at the cages: each one was occupied by a mutilated or diseased animal: most of them turning, swaying and moaning in direst agony in their cramped quarters: others crouching motionless with staring eyes, frozen images of despair. Jenkins turned to the first cage on his right. It contained a retriever blinded in both eyes from the sockets of which oozed blood and matter. He was sitting on his haunches on the bare iron floor of his cage in which he could just turn round, that was all: the bars at the top almost touched his head.

Jenkins stopped and spoke gently to him. The dog raised his ears a little at the unaccustomed sound and threw up his great gentle glossy head with the most piteous long drawn howl that Jenkins had ever heard. Its accent of unutterable woe was such that no human voice could achieve. It said as plainly as words, “Oh, let me out of my prison house, let me die and escape.”

Jenkins eyes filled. He spoke again and put his hand through the bars and stroked the dog’s shoulder and the sightless face turned towards his hand and the dog’s hot nose pushed into it with another long drawn pleading howl.

Jenkin’s looked at the little white enamelled tablet beneath the cage and read:

“March 1st—Eyes removed.” The date was a fortnight back! With a sickening feeling half benumbing him, Jenkins passed to the next cage. Here was a ghastly creature that once had been a dog, staring with glaring eyes through the bars. It took no notice. It’s agony appeared to be so appalling that it was mute and rigid with it.

Jenkins stooped and read:

“Tumour (artificial) on brain. Experiment commenced February 15.” The next cage held a small spaniel puppy with a hugely bloated body that was twisting and writhing in every conceivable position. It’s tongue was hanging out, foam was pouring from its mouth, its eyes bulging from its head, it gave short scream of agony at intervals and threw itself against the bars of its cage.

Jenkins felt it was not mad. Out of the large protruding brown eyes looked not insanity: only terror and wonder at its own awful suffering.

Jenkins read on the cage:

“Virus introduced into stomach.” There was no date.

In the next cage the occupant lay at the point of death. It was a small dog: the floor of its cage was one pool of blood. Where one of its ears should have been gaped a huge hole from which blood was still running. Its head had been apparently bandaged. Its paws evidently tied together but in its madness of pain it had torn away its bonds. Now it lay still on its side. Its mouth open gasping, its eyes staring, too weak to move or cry. Dying at last.

Jenkins read:

“Ear removed. New ear grafted. February 1st.”

A month and a half it had been there!

Jenkins crept on down the middle path between the row: feeling weak and cold as he went. Each cage seemed to him more horrible than the last. Of some the contents are indescribable. Beneath some ran the legend—“Starving Experiments.” And in these the dogs lay rough-haired, motionless, their bones almost through their skin, their eyes glazed and the dates ranged from January.

After the dog cages came cats, cats and kittens in all stages of mutilation with their small red tongues showing in their gasping mouths that let out faint little cries for mercy. After these, monkeys and here underneath Jenkins read:

Measles induced at various early dates.

He paused here looking at the suffering creatures, shivering and crouching on the bare zinc floors of their cells and his face grew strangely dark as he recalled the scientist’s smiling words: “It’s so beneficial to humanity to know that monkeys can have measles!”

His feet crept on again. He felt he could hardly move them but he determined to see it all. Other monkeys had suffered such frightful injuries he could hardly recognize what they were. Their wizened anguished little faces were pressed against the bars. They clung there whining and chattering. Some without eyes, some without ears, some with huge lumps in their throats that they continually pulled at with trembling paws. Then the cages ended. He had come to the end of the row and he saw in front of him a round zinc cylinder-shaped receptacle, just like in appearance the ash barrels seen in back yards. He noticed, however, this had perforated holes in the lid. He lifted this off and down at the bottom of the barrel lay a collie dog.

He called to it and it lifted its head apathetically and gazed up with dull eyes. It was very, very emaciated: just its coat seemed covering its skeleton. Jenkins put down both his arms into the barrel and very gently lifted the dog out bodily and set it on the ground. It lay just where he set it, crumpled up. Then he raised it and spoke to it. The dog apparently tried to respond and moved but as it got on its feet it turned and turned and turned in an endless awful circle. It could not do otherwise. Its head bent down at a queer angle, its legs quivering, its tail and ears hanging, its eyes lifeless, its bones sticking in places through its rough hair, it turned and turned on the same small spot of ground till it sank exhausted.

Jenkins read:

“Portion of brain removed. Interesting circular movement induced.” And the date was two years before the present time.

Jenkins straightened himself, the distorted creature crouching, silent at his feet.

“And this is England!” he said half aloud.

Impossible to cure, to help, to alleviate any of this suffering. Impossible to bestow the last boon of death on these sad helpless beings. For if he freed any of these, new ones would be put in their place.

With his heart heaving, and beating in a tumult of fury, he bent and very tenderly lifted the skeleton collie in his arms, held it for a moment against him and spoke to it gently. Then lowered it back into its awful prison house and replaced the lid.

Then shivering as if with mortal cold he dragged himself on a few paces to the end of the room where there was a small gas fire burning and an arm chair drawn up by it. He sank into this and put his hands to the fire. This was the doctor’s end of the apartment. A screen shut it off from the long line of cages. A square of warm carpet covered the bare tiles on the floor. A small table with some paper and-note books and a shaded lamp stood in front of the fire. Jenkins sat in the doctor’s chair listening to the moaning of unspeakable pain that filled all the air, low and desolate and hopeless, and shuddered.

When the feeling of physical illness had worn off a little, he rose to his feet and retraced his steps down the long avenue of cages. He could not bear to look at them again but kept his gaze resolutely in front of him. He knew he could do nothing to help the hapless tortured inmates. His duties were to clean out the cages and to feed and water and wait upon the healthy animals. He was not allowed to interfere with the animals under experiment. If he overstepped his limit by the very least he saw he would be thrown out at once and he was bent upon staying. He felt quite clearly he was face to face with some momentous evil that was vast and far-reaching and of which he could not read the meaning. He could not grapple with it for he did not fully yet understand what it was but he would be patient, he would be calm, he would be self-controlled, he would watch and study and wait and then perhaps he could do something. But infinite caution would be necessary: no rash step, no giving way to raging impulses of anger and indignation would serve him here nor help those tortured prisoners. “Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon” and he felt he was now the guest of the devil, indeed.

He got out of the apartment at last and closed the door after him. He went down the hallway and listened at the small laboratory door behind which he knew the dog was lying clamped in the trough. The moaning had ceased. There was no sound now. Jenkins crept on up the stairs to his own top floor rooms. Before commencing the flight he first noticed another door on his left which he had not opened. He read on it in passing on a small plate, Lethal Chamber. He dragged himself up the stairs and finally reached his own little rooms at the top: with which he had been so pleased the night before. Only the night before and it seemed he had lived through an age of misery since then. He entered his own little sitting room, bolted the door after him and then sat down at the table, his head in his hands, a broken man. His beliefs, faiths, ideals, were all shattered and fell from him leaving him naked and alone.

This was England; These things were done in England, allowed, approved of, and he had loved England, believed in it, fought for it. Did he love it now? No. Would he fight for it and offer his life again for it? No. He had believed in God. He had loved him. Not all the war and the suffering and the horror of it had shaken his belief in Him. Did he believe in Him now? Love Him? No. There could be no loving, good, all-powerful being who could look down on that laboratory and that man who worked there and not shrivel them both to nothing. A God there might be, but if these things pleased Him then He must be evil. If they did not please Him He must be as powerless as Jenkins himself to stop them.

Perhaps it was that. Perhaps there was a spirit of good but perhaps it could not work alone, perhaps it needed human co-operation. This was a new thought to Jenkins and it give a little light to the broken and dejected man.

CHAPTER 2

Day after day went slowly by and Jenkins toiled along the painful road of life into which he had been so suddenly brought, bearing his burden of grief and pain and learning, learning all the time. Every hour he saw further into and through the mist of horror that surrounded him. He learnt greedily. He felt it was vitally necessary to learn everything about this terrible wrong that he saw being committed, if he wished in any way to remedy it. To fight a thing successfully you must know what it is: you must know what you are fighting.

He saw many volumes on the doctor’s bookshelves and asked permission to read them which was genially accorded him.

“You’ll find things to stagger you in them,” Sir Charles said pleasantly, “and lots of hard words. I don’t think you’ll get very far with them.” But Jenkins did get much farther than the doctor thought. He found the books were mostly volumes written by scientific men describing their own work, records of experiments they had made on living animals set out in full by themselves. And in spite of the stupid jargon of words surrounding them and the heavy language Jenkins saw that two things stood out very plainly, one, the hideous suffering of the animals thus used, the other the absolute uselessness and senselessness of the experiments as far as regarded Humanity. They were very enlightening books and so Jenkins found them. Then there was a big scrap book compiled by the doctor himself, that led Jenkins far along the road of understanding. This book contained newspaper cuttings of all descriptions bearing in any way on medical life and work.

Reports of coroners’ inquests especially those where the conduct of a doctor or nurse had been called in question and where invariably they had been triumphantly cleared by the coroner (usually himself a doctor) and votes of sympathy extended to them. These passages had been underscored with a red pencil and often a note of exclamation added to them, by the old cynic who had pasted them in. There were many announcements of wonderful cures and these were starred by a blue pencil and many pages further on in cuttings of a later date Jenkins would find these “cures” contradicted and dismissed as worthless hoaxes and a blue star was put against these also. Then there were long panegyrics on medical science in general and underneath these were mostly pencilled notes by the doctor, “Written by Smith,” “Good old Ted,” “Very good Charlie,” “That’s the stuff to give ’em,” and so on. Then there were pictures of Royalty opening hospital wards: Royalty going to balls in aid of hospitals, etc., and side by side with these, accounts of patients who had jumped from hospital windows: patients who had died on the operating table, patients who having lost their limbs or their sight by the mistreatment in hospitals went back to their garrets to hang themselves or gas themselves to death. Sometimes these columns were marked by exclamation marks, some times the juxtaposition was left to speak for itself. Jenkins could just imagine the face of the doctor with his tongue in his cheek, as he glued the cuttings in.

Jenkins spent many hours hanging fascinated over this volume.

From the vivisectors’ own books he learnt what vivisection really was, from the reports in the papers he learnt what the public thought it was and how they were assiduously taught by the press to regard it and medical science generally.

Then there were other means of self education, one of the best of which though the most painful was listening to the doctor’s conversation and that of his friends on those evenings when the great man had some friends or some young students in to visit him. Jenkins would be called upon to wait on them at a light supper with heavy drinks which they took in the doctor’s study.

Jenkins as has been said was not a scientific person, he was simply a man of common sense and the way those scientific men talked, the utter brutality and callousness of their jokes, their stories, their whole view of the sufferings of humanity, the confessions they made or rather perhaps one should say the boasts, of how they had acted in their hospital wards, made his blood run cold.

One thing he saw, emerged very clearly and restored somewhat to his mind the belief in eternal Justice. He saw that this Scientific Research, so unutterably wicked and cruel to the animals, was at the same time proving an unspeakable curse to humanity.

As he heard the talk of reckless experiments on patients unnecessary operations, over-doses of X-ray that burnt human insides out, and the joking and laughter over human agony, he recognized that Humanity was being justly punished and that the men, degraded by horrible experiments on animals were totally unfitted to have the care of sick and helpless men and women.

One night climbing to his room after attendance at one of these suppers and listening to the revolting talk, he went to bed, white and dizzy and shaking. In the darkness and stillness a question seemed to form itself within him and he examined it carefully bringing all the knowledge he had gained to bear upon it.

Ought he to kill this man?

Murder! That would be murder: a horrible idea, a horrible thought, a horrible word to the well-balanced, civilized mind; and to Jenkins, sober and straight-living, the typical good citizen without a trace of criminality in his disposition it was appalling.

Murder! No! On no account must one murder. It was an essentially wrong, unpardonable act. But would it be murder? he asked himself in his clear, hard-thinking though uneducated mind. Would it not be justifiable homicide? Let him consider. He must consider this question from all points. Here he was on the verge of a decision to commit an act forbidden by the law of his country, regarded with detestation by his fellows and condemned by religion. He would take the point of law first. The law allowed justifiable homicide. If that were the verdict, the accused was acquitted with honour.

On what grounds was that verdict given when one man killed another? First, self-defence. If the doctor attacked him and he feared his own life was in danger, he might kill the doctor with impunity. His own life. He might kill the doctor to save his own life.

Then why not to save something he valued much more highly? To save from agonising suffering those thousand of helpless innocent loving animals that the doctor would torture during his evil life? Jenkins’ life, what was that? Like all brave natures he had hardly a thought for it. A run-away horse, a woman in a canal, a child on a railway track, any of these might call for and receive its sacrifice at any time. Certainly to save even that one line of animals in the laboratory, slowly perishing in their long drawn out anguish he would have laid down his life, had that been able to help matters.

Therefore, if the law allowed him to murder to save his own life, why should it not allow him to murder to save something he valued infinitely more? Jenkins revolved this anxiously and slowly in his sedate mind till he came to the conclusion that the law should permit him this choice.

Then he took up another point: the law would certainly call it justifiable homicide if he saw the doctor murdering a man, woman or child, any human being, even an imbecile, and killed him in defence of any of those. Then why should he not kill him to save those thousands of poor patients that the doctor would certainly murder if allowed to live out his evil life to its natural close? Only that evening he had heard him saying to a student that he had performed a certain operation three thousand times and it had never done any good: only killed or crippled. Jenkins shuddered as he thought of the mutilated victims dragging out their ruined lives; women who had come to the doctor full of hope and faith and had been sent away according to his own statement, shattered wrecks. But what could they expect? How could they come to a man for sympathy or expect him to be moved or restrained by any decent feeling when he spent his whole life wallowing in the most frightful mutilation of animals?

Jenkins marvelled at their folly.

But he must get back to his point as to the law. The law would allow him to kill the doctor if he were murdering one woman, then why not when he was murdering thousands? Again, there was that paragraph in a daily paper stating that a certain serum had been “successfully tried on 300 children.” What about all the children on whom it had been unsuccessfully “tried”?

Jenkins seemed for a moment to see round him a plain covered with the small graves of children, done to death by the modern Moloch—Science. He would save the lives of many human victims as well as the animal victims if he extinguished this one evil existence.

Since Jenkins had come to the laboratory he had not seen one single useful experiment made, one single operation that might be excused by some people on the ground of its utility. He had seen cats filled with water till they burst, of what good is that to humanity? He had seen dogs distorted by rickets, and dogs put into boxes which were gradually heated while the doctor watched the animals inside through a glass window panting and writhing without water or air. He had seen the dogs dragged out in a desperate condition and expire within half an hour. How was humanity benefited? He had seen monkeys suffering cruelly from measles, to what end? He had seen animals covered with tar expiring in lingering agonies. What was the use?

He had seen the doctor take a clear eyed, healthy cat and deliberately induce an ulcer in one eye and watch it day by day, eating the organ away and when the work of destruction was complete he would set up an ulcer in the other eye, encouraged apparently rather than the reverse by its heartrending screams of pain and finally throw it back into its cage in total blindness and convulsions of agony. And the results? What had the Scientists to show?

A few of their vaunted remedies passed in review before him:

Insulin which the Scientists admitted amongst themselves to be more deadly than the diabetes it was supposed to cure.

Anti-toxin for diphtheria, dangerous and unknown as to its after effects while the simple Bella Donna was a known specific for the disease. The inoculation of anti-typhoid serum used in the war. Jenkins had been to the war and he knew that where the sanitation had been good, there had been no typhoid. Where the sanitation had been bad the anti-typhoid serum had not saved the troops. Typhoid had reigned in spite of it. And so on, and so on. In the whole long list of “discoveries” and “remedies” emanating from laboratories there was not one that he could find that had been proved of benefit, not one for which a simple common-sense substitute could not be found.

Useful, beneficial, good—any of this work? No, it was simply hellish and having seen it as he had at close quarters and recognising it for what it was, it was his duty to stop it in the only way he could.

It would not be murder, it would be homicide and justifiable a hundred times over.

Anger carried him away for a moment but he brought his thoughts back to calm consideration. What good would it do? The removal of this one man? Very little, he admitted sorrowfully. But it seemed to him, in the phrase of the war: “it was his bit.”

How often in the recruiting days the men had been told they were not to worry over the larger aspects, the greater issues of the war. They were not to say to themselves that the little which each man could do would not either win or lose the war. No, each man was to do “his bit.” If he killed one German it was good. If he killed ten, it was better. And if he shrank from killing a fellow man he was to remember that by so doing he was saving the lives of perhaps hundreds of his comrades.

The same reasoning seemed to apply here. He could not do much. He could not sweep away that cancer of modern civilization—medical scientific research. He could not influence the ending of it, any more than he could influence the ending of the war, but he could do his bit. He could kill this one man and by so doing save thousands of his fellow human beings and thousands of his no less fellow beings—the animals.

The human beings, really, Jenkins doubted if it were his mission to save. If they could be so blind, so stupid, so selfish and so cruel as to allow such work as the doctor’s, because they fancied they might gain something from it, it was only Divine Justice that they should be poisoned by the medicines manufactured so hideously. That the Insulin gained by the torture of dogs; the anti-toxins brought by the agony of horses; the small-pox vaccine scooped from the aching sores of cows and all the other vile and filthy products of the laboratory should give them death and disease instead of the relief they sought.

But for the sake of the animals, entirely innocent, unselfish, trusting, devoted, that this fiend would torture daily, year by year, if he lived, for their sake, Jenkins would “do his bit” and save them.

The next morning he rose, his head clear, his heart stout and determined. He had been sent there for some good reason and he seemed to see it clearly before him as Joan of Arc saw her mission revealed to her.

Possessing himself in patience, he would watch and wait till the opportunity came to take the doctor’s life and then he would take it as Jael slew Sisera, as Judith slew Holofernes. How many lives had he taken in the war? He could not remember but it must have been many: lives of good honest brave men fighting for their country as he was fighting for his, then should he hesitate now to take a life so mean, so worthless, so harmful not only to his fellow creatures the animals but also to his fellow men? Why should he not rid the world of this monster? A great calmness fell upon Jenkins as he made his resolve and from that hour, though he lived in pain, he had the courage lent him, of a man devoted to a cause.

CHAPTER 3

It was a Saturday evening and an evil-looking man stood at the door, when Jenkins opened it to a modest ring. He had a large black bag which bulged and looked heavy in his hand.

“A fine cat, mister,” he whispered hoarsely, “only two bob, hand over and let me go.”

Jenkins took the bag and loosening the string at its mouth looked down into it. At the bottom was a soft mass of handsome-looking fur from which a faint mew came as the cat saw Jenkins’ face at the top of the bag. It was evidently very tame and nestled up against Jenkins’ chest directly he drew it out. It was a magnificent creature, not a Persian, but with a very thick coat, pure white and a tail like the brush of an Arctic fox. Jenkins returned the bag and gave two shillings to the man with the evil face who immediately melted into the darkness and Jenkins was just closing the door, the cat still in his arms, when the doctor came up from the outside and entered.

“That’s a fine animal,” he remarked as he closed the door and the cat turned its great golden eyes on him, “how much did you have to give?”

“Only 2/ Sir,” Jenkins answered, “the man has stolen it I should think.”

The doctor laughed.

“Evidently. Some old maid’s cat, I expect. Nice tame beast,” he put his hand on the cat’s head and ruffled the fur backwards and forwards rather roughly. The cat put its head back and looked at the doctor with some resentment in its golden eyes. “Accustomed to sit on the table and drink cream out of the old maid’s saucer, eh?” he went on half playfully. “Well, we’ve a little table here for you, my beauty. We’ll set you on it and clamp you down and then we set it spinning. One hundred miles an hour or more we keep you whirling round for a fortnight and then when we take you off your eyes will be all criss-cross and you’ll be just mad with terror. That’s what we’ll do with you, Pussy.” Then he walked on humming into his own study, into which he went and slammed the door. Jenkins left standing in the passage, the cat still clasped to him, wondered whether men were men or fiends. A sick loathing grew up in him and seemed to submerge his spirit like a great wave. Then it rolled over, leaving him with a clear fierce determination that come what might, this thing in his arms so gentle, so trustful, should never be placed on that hellish table.

The cat, distressed by something in the doctor’s touch or voice or face, turned its head up to Jenkins and fixed its beautiful golden gaze on him and apparently from Jenkins’ drawn sad face it gained confidence and began to purr. Jenkins with the fire of hatred glowing in his heart against mankind climbed the stairs to his own room and deposited the cat on his bed. He then set his stove going, drew his curtains and poured out a saucer of milk. The cat watched all these proceedings appreciatively and purred loudly in response. When it had lapped up all the milk while Jenkins held the saucer, it lay back on the bed and stretched its paws up purring, saying quite clearly, “Come and caress me, I’m accustomed to it. I’m a very nice cat,” and Jenkins sat beside it, stroking it, with the tears burning behind his eye-lids. It was a stolen pet evidently and Jenkins would not have taken it in at the door except that he knew if he refused it, where possibly through him it might have a chance of safety, the cat stealer would simply take it on to another accursed laboratory where it would have no chance of escape from the tortures awaiting it.

That night the doctor called to Jenkins as he was going up to bed, “I’m very busy just now. I’ve got so many things going to attend to but I’ll have more time in a week or so. Just remind me about the cat later on, will you? If I forget.”

Jenkins listened, his face growing dark as he stood in the shadow, on the stairs.

“Yes, Sir,” he replied and went on up.

The cat was waiting for him curled on the bed and mewed delightedly at his entrance, showing its white teeth and its little pink tongue, curled up like a rose leaf, behind them.

Jenkins seated himself beside the cat and fed it on some scraps he had brought up with him. For a week the cat remained, a willing prisoner in his room. He gave it a large tray of earth over by the window to scratch in and replenished it every day from the bit of common ground round the house. He brought everything up to it and waited on it and never let it out where evil eyes could fall on it and all that week he searched the papers daily for some announcement of a lost cat. There were no shops very near the laboratory but he walked every day to the nearest, a small newsagent’s and tobacconist’s where he bought his papers and then studied them diligently in his own room.

At last he found the notice he wanted.

“Lost. A large white tomcat. Not Persian, but thick coat and bushy tail. Finder will be handsomely rewarded if he brings cat to blank Grosvenor Square, W.”

Jenkins read this with a beating heart. This was his cat he felt sure. The doctor was away for his usual week end. This was Saturday. He always was allowed Sunday afternoon for himself. To-morrow he would take the cat back to its owner.

That night he held it tightly to him and hardly slept but spent his time stroking and caressing it and realising how lonely he would be without it. But still to get it out of this hell, safe and alive, was everything. The cat, with all its claws sheathed in its velvet skin patted gently with its paws Jenkins’ thin cheeks and nestled close to him purring ecstatically. It missed its own house and mistress but no animal could be insensible of the flood of love and sympathy that poured out from Jenkins’ unhappy heart. The next morning he spent much time on brushing and combing its silky coat and about two in the afternoon with his heart high in hope he set out for Grosvenor Square, the cat curled round in the lidded basket which Jenkins had brought, filled with vegetables, with him from the country. He thought if he; could once see the owner of the cat and tell him or her of the horrors his or her pet had so narrowly escaped, then surely anyone so rich and powerful as to be able to live in Grosvenor Square would take some steps against the system which made these horrors possible.

When he arrived at the door of the house it was opened by a footman who at once glanced at the basket. When Jenkins asked to see the person who had put in the advertisement, the man replied affably, “Miss Courtneidge is in and I think will see you.” Then he stooped down and scratched at the basket side. “Cushy,” he called and a mew of recognition came from within.

“Come upstairs,” he said and Jenkins followed full of joyful anticipation of coming face to face with someone who surely would listen to his message. He entered a large room and at the far end there sat Miss Courtneidge, a fat, middle-aged woman with a bright intelligent and pleasing face. She jumped up and took the basket from Jenkins smiling and lifted the lid.

“Oh, there you are Cushy,” she exclaimed, and lifted the creature out with many murmurs of delight.

Jenkins stood by respectfully enjoying the scene to the full. There was no doubt the lady genuinely loved her pet and the cat could hardly have a better mistress.

“Do sit down,” she said after a minute, “and tell me where you found him.”

She sat down with the cat in her arms and Jenkins took a seat opposite her.

“A man, a regular cat stealer, I think, brought him in a bag to our place and offered him to me for 2/—I saw at once he was stolen and I thought I’d better take him and try to find the owner. If I hadn’t, the man would have taken him to another laboratory where they wouldn’t have bothered to restore him to his owner but used him in the laboratory.”

The lady was listening intently to Jenkins and he thought her eyes grew harder.

“What are you then?” she asked quietly.

“I am an attendant at a laboratory for Scientific Research,” returned Jenkins, “and the man brought the cat to be experimented upon, but I don’t like the business and I meant to save this cat anyway.”

“If you don’t like it, why do you stay?” asked the lady quietly and very coldly.

Jenkins realised that his hearer’s sympathies were alienated from him and the false position in which he stood came home to him. At first he had thought it might be possible to make a clean breast of his feelings. He had visions of the lady coming to see the tortured animals and in her righteous wrath having the hideous place done away with altogether, but now something in the coldness of her voice and eyes warned him he must go very carefully.

“I stay to try and do what I can for the animals,” he answered, “do you know about this Scientific Research, ma’am?”

“I know that it is a very noble work carried on by selfless men and women who give up their lives to the cause of humanity,” replied the lady proudly.

Jenkins looked back at her aghast as these parrot phrases fell from her lips. Evidently she knew nothing at all about it and against this dense ignorance he felt he had no weapons.

“You don’t know what goes on in the laboratories, animals are tortured to death and given the most hideous sufferings that don’t lead to anything,” he said.

The lady compressed her lips.

“I can’t believe you,” she said icily, “I have many friends who are doctors and scientific men and I am sure they would do nothing but what is right. If they have to experiment on animals I am sure they do it kindly.”

Jenkins could have laughed bitterly as he heard but he controlled himself and answered:

“How can you starve animals kindly, ma’am?”

The lady looked cross and was silent for a moment and Jenkins burst out:

“Do come with me now and I’ll show you what Scientific Research really means. The laboratory is empty, I am in sole charge, the doctor is away. Come and see the animals for yourself. Then you can judge about it.”

The lady looked crosser than ever.

“Thank you. I am quite capable of judging the matter already. I rely upon what my doctor tells me. In any case, if there were any cruelty, I couldn’t bear to see it, I couldn’t sleep for a week if I did.”

Again Jenkins felt helpless and appalled. What stupendous folly, what selfishness! Any cruelty might be practiced, provided she did not see it, provided her sleep was not disturbed.

“I really must ask you to go now,” she continued. “I have a meeting this afternoon here of the League of Love. We have the Bishop coming and we are going to organize something to aid the hospitals.”

Jenkins rose immediately.

“To aid the hospitals! To build new laboratories for the torture of more animals! Oh ma’am, you don’t know what you are doing! If I had not saved your cat he’d have been pinned down to an electric table and spun round at 100 miles an hour for a fortnight and taken off it mad and blind to have his brain opened and looked at. That was his fate and how does that help humanity?”

The lady was standing too.

“You need not expect that I shall increase your reward for bringing him back by telling me these wicked stories,” she said severely. “Here is two pounds. I shall not give you any more!” and she held towards him two pound-notes.

Over Jenkins’ face ran a flame of scarlet, then faded leaving him ashy white. That was what she thought! That he was detailing false sufferings to increase his own reward!

He took the notes from her hand and dropped them on the floor and then stepped forward and put his foot down on them, looking her full in the face.

“That, ma’am, is what I care for your reward! I brought that creature back to you because I loved it. I never thought of the reward and should not have taken any in any case. I pray some day you may be shaken out of the darkness and the ignorance you live in.”

He turned and strode to the door, leaving the notes on the floor and the lady too astonished to say anything. A pair of golden eyes watched him depart and a little soft mew came to his ears as he closed the door and seemed to stab into his heart.

He walked down the stairs and out into the street with a sorely wounded spirit. All the joy and elation at having rescued the cat and restored it was blotted out by the cold tide of despair. He felt that he was helpless to save others just as loving, just as beautiful as this one, from death by torture. What could he do? So long as the world consisted of the friends who did these things and the fools who were so kind that they couldn’t believe in the fiends and so cowardly that they would not consider the question for fear of losing a night’s sleep, what could he do? “God help me, God help me,” was the cry that rose in his heart. And formerly it had comforted him and he had believed that God would help him however unkind man might be. But how? Was there any God? Was it not a Devil who ruled the world if this sort of Scientific Research were allowed in it? Why should God help him, if he cared nothing for the miseries of the innocent and sweet animals he had created?

Thoroughly miserable he went back to the hell on the common and up in his own room, making his solitary tea, he took himself severely to task. Had he wasted that golden opportunity, when he, knowing the truth, was face to face with one who knew nothing except some phrases culled from the articles of doctors, in the Press? Could he have done better? Was it his fault that he had failed? Over and over in his mind he turned that conversation but could decide nothing. His brains felt battered and weary but he was glad the cat was gone.

The very next morning when the doctor returned, he called Jenkins into his study.

“Jenkins our stock of dogs is low, isn’t it?”

“The last one died last night, Sir.”

“Oh: which was that?”

“The little Skye you were starving, Sir.”

“H’m: when did I begin? Do you remember?”

“Ten days ago.”

“Ten days! That’s quite a good record. Isn’t it? Had it eaten that coke I put in the cage?”

“No, Sir. Only gnawed it a bit. I found blood on it where the coke had cut its mouth. It hadn’t eaten it.”

“Oh, well,” cheerily, “we must get in some more dogs. By the way, there’s that cat, bring me that.”

“Sorry, Sir, the cat escaped.”

“What?” the doctor wheeled round in his chair and looked piercingly at his attendant, but Jenkin’s face was still and stolid as a mask.

“You let it go, you mean, do you? I thought you were rather soft headed over that cat when it came in. Now look here, mind this, if any more animals escape at any time, I shall have no further use for you. See?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And to-morrow morning you’ll go and get me half a dozen kittens: big ones. Go to the Army and Navy Stores or anywhere you like but mind those kittens are here by noon. I am going to try some eye transplanting.”

Jenkins withdrew.

How could such a man be allowed to exist, he asked himself. How could such a place as this stand? Why did not a lightning stroke burn it to the ground with its fiendish owner inside? Why did not the flame that swept over Sodom and Gomorra sweep also over the laboratories of London and obliterate them?

Then he smiled grimly remembering how the laboratories were supported by the tax payer, approved by the king, and beloved by the aristocracy.

What was he, Jenkins, to think differently from all these? He was only a poor common-sense man of the people. But he knew and they did not. That was the tragedy of it. He would have given his life to be able to tell and convince them.

CHAPTER 4

One evening the doctor on coming home tossed a card over to Jenkins with the remark, “Better come to the lecture and hear me talk the money out of the public pocket.”

Jenkins looked at the card and saw it admitted him at 8 p. m. on the coming Thursday evening to a lecture on Scientific Research by Sir Charles Smith-Brown, Dsc. M.D., etc., etc. Jenkins thanked him and put the card in his pocket and on the next Thursday he presented his ticket punctually at the time and place appointed.

The small lecture room was already well filled when Jenkins entered and he noticed that the first four or five rows of seats were railed off by a crimson cord from the rest and in these were seated people that Jenkins recognized immediately as “gentlefolk.” They were all very well dressed in semi-evening dress and had, for the most part, nice kind-looking intelligent faces. Jenkins spirits rose as he saw them.

“Surely they can’t easily be humbugged,” he thought, “they’ve been taught to read and think and had plenty of time for schooling.”

He slipped quietly into a vacant seat he saw some rows back of the red cord. Here the people were all in hats and coats and had evidently come on foot to the meeting. Their faces were harder looking than those in front but they also looked intelligent, interested and alert. Jenkins particularly liked the look of his neighbour. A hard working man he should think, perhaps a small tradesman running his own business or perhaps a clerk, anyway he looked keen and quick as a man with his own decided ideas and opinions.

The platform was now filling up with figures: the ladies resplendent in gay coloured Opera cloaks and wearing jewels in their beautifully dressed hair, the men showing large expanses of shirt front. Among these Jenkins noted the sleek form of the doctor and a glow of hatred seemed to spread through him as he noted the suave smile on the thin lips and the benign expression of the whole face so different from the set, savage stare Jenkins was familiar with as the man worked in his laboratory, tearing muscle and nerve out of quivering flesh.

“Blasted hypocrite,” he thought furiously to himself and then he noted the eyes of his neighbour quickly passing over the platform as the stately and imposing figures filed onto it quietly and took their appointed seats.

“Who are they all?” he asked in an undertone of the keen faced one.

“Regular swells, all of them,” the man returned in the same discreet voice which was quick like his eyes. “That’s the Marquis of Sedlestone in the chair and that’s Lord and Lord and Lord,” he ran off the names so quickly Jenkins could hardly catch them. “He’s gulled them all. They all believe in him and this beastly Research. That’s what beats me. How they can be such fools.”

Jenkins nodded sympathetically. He felt happier. Evidently this man beside him knew the truth of things. He longed intensely to confide in him and tell him what he knew but he controlled the impulse. If he was to carry out successfully his great scheme absolute secrecy and concealment of his own feelings was necessary. There was no time for further talk in any case for after a few preliminaries on the platform had been arranged, there was the silver tinkle of a bell and the Marquis of Sedlestone rose to address the audience.

There was absolute silence in the hall and Jenkins listened breathlessly to every word.

“My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, we have the privilege to-night of being gathered together to listen to one of the most distinguished men of our time, Sir Charles Brown-Smith, M.D. Dsc. Science may be said to be the leading force in the world to-day and in him we see one of its most brilliant exponents.” (Applause.) “Science to-day is advancing with the steps of a giant. Disease and decay are fading, diminishing, vanishing before it.”

“What bosh all that is when they can’t cure a common cold,” thought Jenkins.

“Maladies are disappearing. Yellow fever is conquered, consumption all but conquered, cancer—”

“Is increasing,” shouted a voice at the back of the hall.

There was some laughter in the back seats but only a slight offended rustle from the front rows.

“Alas! Yes,” continued the suave well-modulated voice from the platform. “As my friend at the back of the hall has remarked, cancer is increasing and that proves that more research is needed, more patient labour, more funds, more encouragement for those noble men and women who—”

“You’ve been at it now over twenty years,” interrupted the voice in a dominant tone that filled the hall, “and had buckets of money poured into it, without an atom of result, except that cancer is spreading everywhere all the time, and it’s you people who are doing it. You’re not stopping it: you’re spreading it with your beastly laboratories all full of animals dying of it. Aren’t they breathing out cancer all the time? Aren’t their cages full of it? Aren’t the men who look after them carrying cancer germs with them everywhere?”

While these strident questions were being hurled at him, the noble Marquis had waited silent on the platform, looking slightly annoyed and after a second or two he turned and made some observation to a young man sitting behind him, who rose immediately and left the platform by its side door. There had been some applause from various parts of the hall as these questions full of scalding contempt had been shouted out and heads were turned and necks craned to see who the interrupter was. Only the front rows sat unmoved as if they had not heard, their eyes fixed before them waiting for the authorised speaker to continue and a few seconds after the young man had disappeared from the platform, there was a violent scuffle at the back of the room. Between two stout men of the law the interrupter was unceremoniously bundled out.

“There’s the Free Speech of England to-day,” came a caustic whisper from Jenkins’ bright-eyed neighbour, “if ever there’s a revolution in England, it’ll be these damned medical men who are at the bottom of it.”

Jenkins again nodded in silence. The noble Marquis was proceeding.

“As I was saying, Science had made the most remarkable advances and suffering Humanity could turn its eyes hopefully to the future where disease would be stamped out, pain practically abolished, and the onset of old age delayed by 50 or 70 years. But I will not detain you longer. I will leave to our distinguished lecturer the pleasing task of explaining to you how these marvels will be accomplished.”

“Awful tosh,” murmured keen-eyes as the noble Marquis took his seat and Sir Charles Brown-Smith rose to address the meeting.

“My Lords, ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “my noble friend has promised you that I shall tell you some of the most recent marvels Science has accomplished and I will not disappoint you, but first I should like to say a few words on that vexed question—experiments on living animals. Some evilly disposed persons have recently been trying to oppose the glorious march of Science by suggesting that there is cruelty connected with these experiments that are so vital to our work, so necessary to its success, so far reaching in their results for suffering humanity. I wish now to state that in my work I am frequently obliged to resort to these experiments and also to witness them in the studies of others and I can confidently assure you that there is not an atom of cruelty connected with them.” Here the doctor paused and beamed upon his docile audience through his large spectacles while a gentle smile suffused his whole benign countenance. A warm murmur of grateful applause rose from the seats beyond the red cord: the mass of the people at the back listened in sullen silence: an indrawn breath of sheer astonishment from Jenkins greeted this stupendous lie.

“The animals,” continued the doctor, “who have the honour of being permitted to share in this glorious work, are cared for with devoted attention, no effort is spared in seeing that they are properly housed and well fed. They have every comfort and to see them sporting behind the bars of their spacious cages one would imagine they were rejoicing in their great destiny.”

Jenkins, on hearing this, simply turned in his chair, open mouthed to his companion of the keen eyes, and met their clear quizzical gaze fixed upon him.

“Good one, that eh?” keen-eyes murmured.

“Ananias!” shouted an unregenerate person at the back of the hall, “what about your starving experiments?”

The doctor deigned no reply and the former scuffling sounds being repeated, the audience knew that the interrupter had been removed and the English tradition of liberty again upheld.

“Well fed, well cared for, watched over,” continued the doctor blandly, “and all they have to suffer is the trifling discomfort of a quick prick from an inoculating needle or a variation of their usual diet.”

As these lies poured smoothly forth in the great man’s mellow voice, Jenkins saw before him the rows of desolate zinc floored cages, each with its tortured inmate moaning out its life, he saw the puppies starving and distorted beyond recognition in the experiment for rickets, the dog blinded and sitting in hopeless agonies because his eyes had been taken to graft into another dog’s sockets, the monkeys wasted to a skeleton or hugely swelled, going blind and semi-paralysed because their thyroid gland had been cut out, all these horrible sights rose before him and he gazed at the speaker, stupefied and dumb.

His neighbour spoke in a low voice in his ear, very low because he had no wish to be turned out. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the red cord.

“Why on earth they don’t see that he’s guying them, beats me,” he said.

“So now let us dismiss this myth of cruelty from our mind, let us remember that great men are rarely cruel and let us refuse to believe these unjust libels that ignorant and prejudiced people are so wantonly spreading.” Here the doctor’s voice took on a mild severity and the red corders all warmly applauded.

The speaker proceeded.

“I have mentioned how this myth of cruelty impedes the progress of Science but I shall now touch upon something that is even more obstructive to our success: something that is constantly hampering us in our forward march, and that is in this country the absence of compulsion. Yes, my friends, it is true: we are suffering from too much liberty. Liberty is a very excellent thing, a fine thing, but it can be pushed too far, we can have too much of it.”

“Never,” from the back benches.

“Pardon me, we can have too much even of liberty. Liberty which harms ourselves, liberty which harms others must be curtailed. I say unhesitatingly that liberty to refuse the untold benefits of vaccination, of inoculation, is an evil. Those who are so blind as to fail to see the benefits, for themselves, should be forced to accept them. I look forward personally to that time, not I trust, far distant, when like our great sister nation, America, we shall have compulsion for everything that is now left to the ignorant individual to decide for himself.”

At this point the red corders began to move uneasily in their chairs and look at each other. They were not quite so sure about all this.

“What can the individual know about the uses or the benefits of the processes offered to him, which he so often rashly and fatally refuses? Is it fair to throw the burden of deciding upon him? How far better that the man of Science, the man who knows, should decide for him and compel him to accept the inestimable blessings of Science! I am pleased to say there is a great forward movement to be noticed lately in this direction, no one can enter the Army or the Navy or any public service, nor can a boy go to a public school without being vaccinated for instance, very excellent, very admirable and now that we have the Ministry of Health we may look forward to suitable laws being passed which will bring every individual, no matter of what class or station under the grasp of the healing hand of Science. Personally I think, and I hope, it will not be long before that simple and so necessary operation of taking out the tonsils will be made compulsory.”