WHEN we read of the bloody massacres of men and animals in the arenas of ancient Rome, we shake our heads and say to ourselves, how barbarious they were in those old days after all.

And when we read of the bull fights in Spain with their disemboweled horses and frantic bulls; or of the cruelty with which horses, mules and donkeys are beaten, and prodded, and driven to death in Sicily and Morocco; or when we stumble upon some account of animal sacrifice upon the altars of some heathen religion; we unconsciously draw ourselves up with a feeling of pride in our American institutions and rejoice that we at least are progressive and enlightened and humane.

Meanwhile, forty thousand cattle and seventy thousand hogs arrive at Chicago every day to have their skulls crushed and their throats cut that men may devour their carcasses; and thousands upon thousands of muskrats, minks, foxes, bobcats, skunks, badgers, weasels and other animals, are trying to tear their bleeding and swollen legs out of the inexorable jaws of the steel trap that high-heeled young women may parade their pelts upon their shoulders.

Meanwhile in a thousand laboratories attached to schools, colleges, hospitals, universities or dairy farms, rats and mice are rotting by the thousands with enormous tumors induced in them in a vain effort to make them develop human cancer; guinea pigs are dying in convulsions from injections of various drugs, serums and vaccines under the administration of mustard oil in their eyes or with shaven bodies drenched in ice water and freezing under the breeze of an electric fan; and dogs are coughing themselves to death with their lungs choked with the latest and deadliest poison gas, or are lying inert or vomiting in their wire cages after having their intestines ligatured, or their vitals burned out with x-rays.

Are we more civilized than the Romans or the poor, half-starved Sicilians or Arabs?