Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-06-01
A FIGHT OVER THE ANIMALS

A FIGHT OVER THE ANIMALS
 When the president of the United States, the emperor of Germany, or any other high and mighty potentate steps aside from the dignity and responsibil- ities of state to make excursions into the realms of art or science or the re- public of letters, he becomes subject to all the rules that prevail in them and is liable to the same sort of contradie' tion and criticism which ordinary nor tals experience. Mir. Roosevelt, in his capacity of naturalist, has been taking a hand in controversy now raging about animal intelligence, and has stir red up the Rev. Dr. Long, an appar- ently capable and decidedly bold and acrimonious antagonist.
 There have arisen two distinct schools in regard to the questions involved, which may perhaps be distinguished as as the metaphysical romantic and the realistic. The romantic is a new growth and numbers among its adherents such we'll known writers as Jack London, Dr. Long Seton Thompson and Charles D. C.. Roberts. In the attractive litera- ture they have produced they repre- sent the dogs, wolves, bears and other animals they write about very much as four-footed human beings, lacking little but the power of speech to class them with us. Their mental states and processes are analysed, their af feetions and intellects rated, and reason and intelligence attributed to them quite up to those of the average hu man being, and in some instances far surpassing it. All this is so skillfully done, with such ingenious persuasive ness and with such an air of reality, that the unwary reader finds himself convinced before he knows it.
 The realistic school, led by the vet cran John Burroughs, than whom there is nowhere closer, more sympathetic, saner observer and student of nature, strenuously objects to the metaphysical romantic style of depicting animals as rnfounded and misleading, and calcu- lated to give to those unable to observe at first hand an entirely false impress sion. He accounts for all the manifes- tations of intelligence they display by the old fashioned theory of instinct, resulting from long experience of uni form needs and environment, transmit ted and perfected from generation to generation until it becomes an auto matic guide to action, adequate to the wants of the individual and the species MT. Roosevelt, in a magazine interview, ranges himself on the side of his friend Burroughs, charaeterizing Dr. Long in the course of it as "perhaps the worst of these nature writing offenders. !" MT. Long hits back vigorously. He stigma tizes MT. Roosevelt's literary style as fit for the waste basket, '' accuses him of colossal vanity, says his article is "eowardly and venomous," and de- clares that he is unsportsmanlike and cruel in his slaughter of big game. His argument is said to be a series of dog matte statements and denials wholly without supporting evidence, and Dr. Long goes on to assert that for every one of his own stories stigmatized as false and impossible he has complete and convincing proof. He closes his vindieation with the following trench ant paragraph:
 In way MT. Roosevelt is not a naturalist, but game killer. Of the real spirit of animal life, of their hab- it's, as discovered by quiet watching with no desire to kill, he knows noth- ing and never will learn until he goes into the woods leaving his pack of dogs, his rife, his prejudice, and his present disposition behind him.
 Possibly the next step in controver- sy already grown so warm will be the founding of new Ananias club out side of politics.