Meat Eating and Temperance
THE following confession made by the editor of the London Clarion is an interesting contribution to the literature on the subject of the relation of meat eating to temperance:— “I have just turned vegetarian. The change was sudden. I felt one day that I could not eat flesh any more. And I have not the least intention of ever eating flesh again. “My friends are surprised; so am I. But whereas they are surprised that I have adopted a vegetable diet, I am surprised that I did not do it years ago. “I have known for quite forty years that flesh eating was horrible. I could tell you things about the slaughtering of animals that would make your blood curdle. I have known for more than twenty years that flesh eating was unhealthy. I have all my life loved animals, and hated the idea of taking life. Yet I have gone on eating meat until a few weeks ago. And now I am wondering why I did it. And the strange thing about it all is that the sudden revulsion of feeling is so strong that I do not believe I could eat flesh now if I tried. “What turned me?—I do not know. One day I looked at some roast lamb, and I thought, exactly as I had thought a hundred times before, that it was a horrible thing to eat a lamb. But this time I felt that I could not eat it. I have seen lambs killed. I saw it all—forty years ago. “In one way the effects of a vegetable diet have surprised me. I have been a heavy smoker for more than thirty years. I have often smoked as much as two ounces of tobacco in a day. I do not suppose that I have smoked less than eight ounces a week for a quarter of a century. I have some old meerschaum pipes as black as crime and as rank as sin. If there was one thing in life which I feared my will was too weak to conquer, it was the habit of smoking. Well, I have been a vegetarian for eight weeks, and I find my passion for tobacco is weakening. “It is astonishing. I can not smoke those black pipes now. I have had to get new pipes and milder tobacco, and I am not smoking half an ounce a day. It does not taste the same; I am not nearly so fond of it. I am told that this is quite common. “Again: I have found that I can not drink wine. Several times I have tried a glass of hock or burgundy; it is no use. It tastes like physic. It makes me stupid and sleepy. “Why do I write these confessions?—Because these things have come upon me as a revelation; because I begin to see that the great cure for the evil of national intemperance is not teetotal propaganda, but vegetarianism. Let our temperance friends consider this. It is most important. If we can get people to give up eating meat, the drink problem will solve itself.”