* * * * *

CHAPTER VII

THE GUERRILLAS OF DESTRUCTION


We have now to deal with THE GUERRILLAS OF DESTRUCTION.

In warfare, a _guerrilla, or bushwhacker_, is an armed man who
recognizes none of the rules of civilized warfare, and very often has no
commander. In France he is called a "franc-tireur," or free-shooter. The
guerrilla goes out to live on the country, to skulk, to war on the weak,
and never attack save from ambush, or when the odds clearly are on his
side. His military status is barely one remove from that of the spy.

The meat-shooters who harry the game and other wild life in order to use
it as a staple food supply; the Italians, negroes and others who shoot
song-birds as food; the plume-hunters and the hide-and-tusk hunters all
over the world are the guerrillas of the Army of Destruction. Let us
consider some of these grand divisions in detail.

Here is an inexorable law of Nature, to which there are no exceptions:

_No wild species of bird, mammal, reptile or fish can withstand
exploitation for commercial purposes_.

The men who pursue wild creatures for the money or other value there is
in them, never give up. They work at slaughter when other men are