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Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946

"First and Last Things"

Men band
themselves together in leagues and loyalties, in cults and organizations
and nationalities, and it is often hard to say whether the bond is one
of love for the association or hatred of those to whom the association
is antagonized. The two things pass insensibly into one another. London
people have recently seen an edifying instance of the transition, in the
Brown Dog statue riots. A number of people drawn together by their
common pity for animal suffering, by love indeed of the most
disinterested sort, had so forgotten their initial spirit as to erect a
monument with an inscription at once recklessly untruthful, spiteful in
spirit and particularly vexatious to one great medical school of London.
They have provoked riots and placarded London with taunts and irritating
misrepresentatin of the spirit of medical research, and they have
infected a whole fresh generation of London students with a bitter
partizan contempt for the humanitarian effort that has so lamentably
misconducted itself. Both sides vow they will never give in, and the
anti-vivisectionists are busy manufacturing small china copies of the
Brown Dog figure, inscription and all, for purposes of domestic
irritation.


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