The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn A New Deal For Animals About a month ago, I wrote a piece called "The Community of Living Things." In it I summed up the ideas which Joseph Wood Krutch had woven...
...But what I am concerned with now is the fact that these two are united in an effort to enlarge the emotional reach of humanity...
...Krutch has been a university professor and dramatic critic...
...But in two important respects they are alike...
...the beginnings of government among the animals...
...They have followed entirely different courses through life, but have come out near the same spot...
...But the point is that they are pictured with understanding and respect...
...This impulse to deal fairly with our fellow tenants of the earth goes far beyond mere prevention of cruelty to animals...
...In it I summed up the ideas which Joseph Wood Krutch had woven into his book, the Voice of the Desert...
...In their looks and manners, and every superficial way, they are as different as can be...
...I had his place, and he was much too well-mannered to contest it with me...
...Perhaps I am being too solemn and pretentious about Louis Bromfield's charming volume...
...The one which usually rides in the front seat with the master was, to be sure, puzzled for a moment...
...I do mean that they have both understood deep down the threat offered by both of them and have spoken against them in articles and books and speeches that went down to the nature of things...
...Bromfield relates a number of incidents to show that animals have an effective system of communication...
...Krutch attempts to see every living creature on the great biological ladder stretching from the beginning up to now and on into the dim future—and each one of them he discerns with whatever understanding and sympathy he can muster...
...Setting up psychiatric clinics for our animal friends may be pushing the idea over the edge of good sense...
...I am thinking now especially of his last book, Animals and Other People (Harper, $3.75...
...For one thing, they have both fought the same sort of fundamental fight against fascism and Communism...
...What is happening now is that we are at last getting around to the "lower" animals and making a conscious effort to be fair to them...
...I like the place so much that every word written about it sounds like music to me...
...In an instant, he and his comrade were sitting up straight and alert and ready for any adventure...
...As we went on from point to point—to the machinery shed, the pig lot, the cornfield, the vegetable garden—they dismounted with us, looked at whatever we looked at or went beyond us by chasing a rabbit or a woodchuck...
...It is an extension of the concept of democracy beyond the human race...
...Now it becomes my pleasant duty to introduce Mr...
...But he quickly understood the necessary rearrangement...
...These men about whom I am writing might be called Thomas Jeffersons of the wider biological world...
...Bromfield is more the novelist and less the scientist...
...They are sketched as characters in a novel or a play...
...I was sorry that I could not talk dog language so that I could take in their comments on the sights and smells...
...But when we were ready to proceed, they would always be on hand...
...I had a feeling that there were two people in that back seat...
...In a way, you may say that they are trying to resume and expand the efforts of St...
...I don't mean, merely, that they have both been against the two isms from the start or that they have taken pains to compare and discriminate between them...
...Bromfield has functioned as novelist and farmer...
...If so, I need not tell them that this brilliant amateur scientist's central thought is that, if we are to live successfully on the land, "We must be a part, not only of the human community, but of the whole community...
...Every boy who has grown up on a farm must have noticed, as our authors do...
...But I am proud to be lined up with these two men...
...It has taken novelists and playwrights a long time to represent people of the so-called "lower" classes on an equal basis with their "betters...
...I suppose most of my readers instantly rushed out and bought the book...
...Often I have been amused to see how quickly our sparrows or juncos spread the news that dinner has been served at the feeding station...
...When Louis and I jumped into the jeep to look at something out on the farm, the two great boxers immediately took possession of the back seat...
...I know he is right, for I have made similar observations over and over again...
...Sometimes I hear people speak against Communism and I am ashamed to he on the same side with them—their reasons are so bad...
...Bromfield that there should he a way of preventing unsympathetic and unimaginative people from holding in thrall any sort of animal pets...
...It is really just a series of happy-go-lucky pieces about the four-footed friends he has known—most of them playmates on Malabar Farm...
...Francis...
...Krutch to another good friend of mine, Louis Bromfield...
...Here the dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, skunks and the rest of them are not viewed as links in an evolutionary process but as companions in everyday life...
...But many will agree with Mr...
...These two men should certainly get together...
Vol. 38 • November 1955 • No. 46
