THE INTERNATIONAL ASPECT OF VEGETARIAMISM
By B. Lindsay (a paper read at the Annual Meeting)
We are apt to magnify the importance of all things belonging
to our own nation, and possibly this tendency leads us to undervalue
the work which is being done for our cause in other lands. Mr. Anderson,
a correspondent of the Vegetarian Society at Novgorod, who communicates
with us through a translator, declines - not unreasonably - to be
enrolled as a member of the English Vegetarian Society. He
suggests that it is now time for the formation of an International
Vegetarian Society directed by an International Electoral Committee.
There can be but one opinion as to the desirability
of such an International Union, and that an affirmative one; but much
discussion as to many practical difficulties must take place before
the plan can be carried into execution. It is to be hoped that the
members assembled at the Annual Meeting will be able to offer some
practical suggestions for an International Vegetarian Congress, as
a prelude to the formation of an International Vegetarian Union. Let
us gather together representatives of all countries and of all creeds,
from our American cousins in the Far West to our Buddhist fellow Vegetarians
in the far East.
In the meanwhile we ought to make a courteous compromise
with the patriotic scruples of our foreign friends, by asking them
not to become members, but corresponding members of
our Society.We learn that of old the Vegetarian Society had corresponding
members, but the custom has fallen out of use, and is only recorded
as a matter of archaic history. We hope that, pending the consideration
of an International Congress, a list of foreign correspondents will
be made out, and published in the Dietetic Reformer, with an
invitation addressed to these foreign allies to send communications
to our Society at stated intervals, say on the occasion of every Annual
Meeting, or of every May and October Meeting. Such an invitation would
doubtless result in bringing us many interesting details regarding
work in our cause which is done abroad.
