The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke [90]
“Then things got a bit personal, though still in a friendly sort of way, and we agreed that there was a distinct cleavage of opinion between the people who handled whales as whales and those who saw them only as statistics on food-production charts. After that Burrows went off and made some phone calls, and kept us all waiting around for half an hour while he talked to a few people up in the Secretariat. He finally came back with what were virtually my orders, though he was careful not to put it that way. It comes to this: I’ve got to be an obedient little ventriloquist’s dummy at the inquiry.”
“But suppose the other side asks you outright for your personal views?”
“Our counsel will try to head them off, and if he fails I’m not supposed to have any personal views.”
“And what’s the point of all this?”
“That’s what I asked Burrows, and I finally managed to get it out of him. There are political issues involved. The Secretariat is afraid that the Maha Thero will get too powerful if he wins this case, so it’s going to be fought whatever its merits.”
“Now I understand,” said Indra slowly. “Do you think that the Thero is after political power?”
“For its own sake—no. But he may be trying to gain influence to put across his religious ideas, and that’s what the Secretariat’s afraid of.”
“And what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” Franklin answered. “I really don’t know.”
He was still undecided when the hearings began and the Maha Thero made his first personal appearance before a world-wide audience. He was not, Franklin could not help thinking as he looked at the small, yellow-robed figure with its gleaming skull, very impressive at first sight. Indeed, there was something almost comic about him—until he began to speak, and one knew without any doubt that one was in the presence both of power and conviction.
“I would like to make one thing perfectly clear,” said the Maha Thero, addressing not only the chairman of the commission but also the unseen millions who were watching this first hearing. “It is not true that we are trying to enforce vegetarianism on the world, as some of our opponents have tried to maintain. The Buddha himself did not abstain from eating meat, when it was given to him; nor do we, for a guest should accept gratefully whatever his host offers.
“Our attitude is based on something deeper and more fundamental than food prejudices, which are usually only a matter of conditioning. What is more, we believe that most reasonable men, whether their religious beliefs are the same as ours or not, will eventually accept our point of view.
“It can be summed up very simply, though it is the result of twenty-six centuries of thought. We consider that it is wrong to inflict injury or death on any living creature, but we are not so foolish as to imagine that it can be avoided altogether. Thus we recognize, for example, the need to kill microbes and insect pests, much though we may regret the necessity.
“But as soon as such killing is no longer essential, it should cease. We believe that this point has now arrived as far as many of the higher animals are concerned. The production of all types of synthetic protein from purely vegetable sources is now an economic possibility—or it will be if the effort is made to achieve it Within a generation, we can shed the burden of guilt which, however lightly or heavily it has weighed on individual consciences, must at some time or other have haunted all thinking men as they look at the world of life which shares their planet.
“Yet this is not an attitude which we seek to enforce on anyone against his will. Good actions lose any merit if they are imposed by force. We will be content to let the facts we will present speak for themselves, so that the world may make