3
the straw. Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life,
who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal. Boxer
was an enormous beast, nearly eighteen hands high, and as strong as
any two ordinary horses put together. A white stripe down his nose
gave him a somewhat stupid appearance, and in fact he was not of
first-rate intelligence, but he was universally respected for his steadi-
ness of character and tremendous powers of work. After the horses
came Muriel, the white goat, and Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin
was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. He sel-
dom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical
remark-for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to
keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no
flies. Alone among the animals on the farm he never laughed. If
asked why, he would say that he saw nothing to laugh at. Neverthe-
less, without openly admitting it, he was devoted to Boxer; the two
of them usually spent their Sundays together in the small paddock
beyond the orchard, grazing side by side and never speaking.
The two horses had just lain down when a brood of ducklings, which
had lost their mother, filed into the barn, cheeping feebly and wan-
dering from side to side to find some place where they would not be
trodden on. Clover made a sort of wall round them with her great
foreleg, and the ducklings nestled down inside it and promptly fell
asleep. At the last moment Mollie, the foolish, pretty white mare who
drew Mr. Jones's trap, came mincing daintily in, chewing at a lump
of sugar. She took a place near the front and began flirting her white
mane, hoping to draw attention to the red ribbons it was plaited with.
Last of all came the cat, who looked round, as usual, for the warmest
place, and finally squeezed herself in between Boxer and Clover;
there she purred contentedly throughout Major's speech without lis-
tening to a word of what he was saying.
All the animals were now present except Moses, the tame raven, who
slept on a perch behind the back door. When Major saw that they had
all made themselves comfortable and were waiting attentively, he
cleared his throat and began:
4
"Comrades, you have heard already about the strange dream that I
had last night. But I will come to the dream later. I have something
else to say first. I do not think, comrades, that I shall be with you for
many months longer, and before I die, I feel it my duty to pass on to
you such wisdom as I have acquired. I have had a long life, I have
had much time for thought as I lay alone in my stall, and I think I
may say that I understand the nature of life on this earth as well as
any animal now living. It is about this that I wish to speak to you.
"Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face
it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are
given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and
those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom
of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to
an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in Eng-
land knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old.
No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and
slavery: that is the plain truth.
"But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land
of ours is so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who
dwell upon it? No, comrades, a thousand times no! The soil of Eng-
land is fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of affording food in
abundance to an enormously greater number of animals than now in-
habit it. This single farm of ours would support a dozen horses,
twenty cows, hundreds of sheep-and all of them living in a comfort
and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why then
do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the
whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human be-
ings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is
summed up in a single word-Man. Man is the only real enemy we
have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and
overwork is abolished for ever.
"Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does
not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough,
he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the
animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare mini-
