I desire to extend my most earnest good wishes and
congratulations to the Commission of Conservation of Canada.
Your address on the need of animal sanctuaries in Labrador
must appeal, it seems to me, to every civilized man. The
great naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, in his book, "The
World of Life," recently published, says that all who
profess religion, or sincerely believe in the Deity, the
designer and maker of this world and of every living thing,
as well as all lovers of Nature, should treat the wanton and
brutal destruction of living things and of forests as among
the first of forbidden sins. In his own words, "All the
works of Nature, animate or inanimate, should be invested
with a certain sanctity, to be used by us but not abused,
and never to be recklessly destroyed or defaced. To pollute
a spring or a river, to exterminate a bird or a beast,
should be treated as moral offences and as social crimes.
Never before has there been such widespread ravage of the
earth's surface by the destruction of vegetation, and with
it, animal life, and such wholesale defacement of the earth.
The nineteenth century saw the rise and development and
culmination of these crimes against God and man. Let us hope
that the twentieth century will see the rise of a truer
religion, a purer Christianity." I have condensed what Mr.
Wallace said because it is too long to quote in full. He
shows that this wanton and brutal defacement of Nature, this
annihilation of the natural resources that should be part of
the National capital of our children and children's
children, this destruction of so much that is beautiful and
grand, goes hand in hand with the sordid selfishness which