To try to "change the venue" is sometimes the policy of defendants in an action at law, and a similar device is adopted by those who would stave off the hearing of the vegetarian case. "The tropics" are the convenient limbo to which this uncongenial subject is most frequently consigned; and it is with a proud sense of humour and self-assurance that the British Islander, who objects to alien immigration and all foreign frivolities, warns the vegetarian heresy to keep clear of his inhospitable clime. Such diet may be all very well, he thinks, for passive Hindoos, but not for the hard-working inhabitants of this temperate zone.

British Islander: Vegetarianism? No thank you; not here! All very nice in Africa and India, I dare say, where you can sit all day under a palm-tree and eat dates.

Vegetarian: But I have not observed that when you visit Africa or India you practise vegetarianism. On the contrary, you take your flesh-pots with you everywhere—even to the very places where you admit you don't need them, and where, as in India, they give the greatest offence to the inhabitants.

British Islander: Oh, well, it's no affair of theirs, is it, if I take my roast beef?

Vegetarian: Yet you think it your affair to interfere with the cannibals when they take their roast man. And have you observed that it is in the tropical zone, not the temperate zone, that cannibalism is most rife?

British Islander: Why do you remind me of that?

Vegetarian: To show you that all this talk about vegetarianism being "a matter of climate" is pure humbug. The use of flesh is a vicious habit everywhere, and nowhere a necessity, except where other food is not procurable.

British Islander: But do we not need more oil and fat in northern climates?

Vegetarian: Undoubtedly; but these can be readily obtained without recourse to flesh.

British Islander: Then how do you account for the fact that northern races have been, to so great an extent, carnivorous?

Vegetarian: Perhaps because in primitive times hunting and pasturage were less toilsome than agriculture. But I am not called on to "account" for such a fact. Their past addiction to flesh food no more proves the present utility of flesh-eating than their gross drinking habits prove the utility of alcohol.

British Islander: Can you quote any scientific authority for your contention?

Vegetarian: There is one which is all the more valuable because it is an admission made by an opponent. Sir William Lawrence wrote: "That men can be perfectly nourished, and that their physical and intellectual capabilities can be fully developed in any climate by a diet purely vegetable, has been proved by such abundant experience that it will not be necessary to adduce any formal arguments on the subject."^[28] "In any climate," mark! And a diet "purely vegetable"; whereas all you are asked to do is to forego the actual flesh foods, and not the animal products. But come now! Ask me the great question!

British Islander: What is that? There is only one other I had in mind. What would become of the Esquimaux?

Vegetarian: Of course! I have always been profoundly touched by the disinterested concern of the Englishman (when vegetarianism looms ahead) for the future of that Arctic people. Well, perhaps the question of what ice-bound savages might do, or might not do, need scarcely delay the decision of civilised mankind. For that matter, what would become of the polar bears? If you cannot dissociate your habits from those of the Esquimaux, why don't you eat blubber? At least they have a better reason for eating blubber than some people have for eating beef—they can get nothing else.

The dishonesty of the excuse that vegetarianism "may be all very well in the tropics" is shown by the fact that Englishmen, when living in the tropics, make precisely the contrary statement. "You would be surprised," writes Mr. B. K. Adams, from Ceylon, "if you knew how much prejudice and opposition there is here. The most amusing part is that nearly everyone says, it is all very well being a vegetarian in England, in a cool climate like that, but out here in this hot, depressing, and enervating climate, you must have meat, and some add alcoholic stimulant."^[29]

Twenty years ago, just the same "climatic" argument used to be put forward by the opponents of the temperance movement; it was impossible here to abstain from alcoholic drink, whatever it might be elsewhere. We do not often meet with that argument now; on the contrary, it is generally admitted that a disuse of alcohol brings with it an increased power of hardihood and endurance. As in drink, so in food. Those who fly to stimulants obtain a temporary sense of comfort at the cost of permanent vigour.

But granting that it is possible to support life on vegetarian diet in northern climates, is it also possible, asks the conscientious doubter, to live at one's highest energy under such conditions? Look at the carnivorous Mr. Dash's career, it is said, as compared with that of the vegetarian Mr. So-and-So! Was not the greater public activity of the former attributable to his mixed diet? To which it may be replied that any such personal comparison is necessarily useless, from lack of sufficient data as to the relative powers and opportunities of the persons compared. It is obvious that a man whose convictions are unpopular will have far less opportunity of carrying his principles into action than one who is the mouthpiece of widely current opinions, to the propagation of which he devotes, perhaps, an equal amount of ability. For this reason it is absurd to suggest that vegetarians, or any other class of unpopular reformers, are living on a less active plane because their activities are not of the kind that commend themselves to the man in the street—or to that equally fallible person, the man in the study.

The whole notion that vegetarians are less able than flesh-eaters to endure a severe climate is a delusion; it is not only untrue, but the contrary of the truth. "No one surely suggests," says Dr. Oldfield, "that the English climate is too cold for a vegetarian dietary, when there is the experience of the stalwart, hardy Scotch peasantry, in a climate far more rigorous, developing brain and muscle superior to the average Englishman, and this upon a dietary which for generations has been so largely vegetarian that no one would dream of saying that the small amount of flesh eaten by them could have had anything to do with the matter."^[30]

Anyone who is intimately acquainted with the vegetarian movement in this country will bear me out when I say that the average vegetarian is much less susceptible than the average flesh-eater to extremes of cold and heat, and can get through an English winter in comparative comfort, without any of the "wrapping up" to which the mixed dietists are reduced. It is amusing, indeed, after being asked that common question, "Don't you feel the cold very much, as you eat no meat?" to observe one's questioner attired perhaps to face a moderate London winter like a German student for a duel—a moving mass of scarves and furs and overcoats, stoked up internally with plates of beef and cups of bovril, and shivering withal. "Poor fellow!" one thinks, "it looks as if you were the person whose diet might be all very well for those who live in the tropics, but not for the hard-working inhabitants of this northern clime."