You need to know about the school-missish tenderness of the English towards every kitten, you need to recall the hundreds of pet names they lavish on ducklings, puppies and canaries, to understand their feverish interest in court proceedings where some runty mongrel figures as the hero.

Forget ducklings! I saw a most respectable gentleman finding compliments even for a crocodile in the zoological gardens, although I believe there are many people spending the night on the damp grass of Hyde Park who would gladly exchange places with this reptile.

‘Poor fellow!’, whispers a gangly Miss at the cage of a snarling lion, and the Animal Protection League in its notices begs street urchins in the name of Christ not to destroy birds’ nests or to hitch rides on carriages. And although you could not find a nest in London in a hundred years and the carriages here are such that there is no possibility of attaching oneself to them, it is nevertheless still customary for the League's instructions to elicit expressions of admiration and emotion.

Suddenly comes a sensational piece of news: Mr Coleridge, Secretary of the Anti-Vivisection Society, has announced at a public meeting that Professor Bayliss, who lectures in Physiology at University College, tortured and tormented a dog in front of his students without any apparent need, and cut open its maw though it struggled and trembled continuously in his hands. ‘The Professor did not even trouble to anaesthetise his unfortunate victim’, Coleridge said, and one can easily picture how many tears fell to the floor of the club where the speech was made.

Meanwhile, Mr Bayliss was not aware of anything. Only a newspaper report of Coleridge's speech alerted him to the accusation levelled against him. He is in court. And yesterday I had an opportunity to witness the formalities of a case of ‘libel and defamation of a good name’.

Coleridge's thin lips, tightly pursed in disdain, never once parted during the whole time. Pale, with arms crossed on his chest, he listened attentively to everything that was said in the courtroom. And what was said there was of a kind not calculated to please him at all.