The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. MONDAY, JULY 8, 1935. DUELLING AND WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 159, 8 July 1935, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

MONDAY, JULY 8, 1935. DUELLING AND WAR.

for the cause thct lacks dasisianoe, For the wrong that needs resistavfit, For the future in '.he disiar.ee, And the good that we oau da.

If officers of the Italian army propose to challenge every foreigner who publicly criticises Italy's Abyssinian policy, there will be such a shortage of officers that it will be necessary to call a halt in the operations on the frontier. Captain Fanelli's challenge to Major Attlee, of the English Labour Party, is ominously symbolical. He wishes to fight Major Attlee in any neutral country with any weapons. Major Attlee might have suggested Kamchatka and pillows, but in dealing with foreign countries members of Parliament have to preserve the courtesies and keep humour at arm's length. A man who has not en6ugh

sense of humour to prevent him from challenging a foreigner to a duel would certainly not appreciate a-joke made at the expense of the institution of duelling. So Major AttlCe contented himself with saying that duelling was a barbarous and obsolete method of liquidating quarrels, and that it put a premium on bullying, and explaining that he criticised the Italian Government and not the Italian people. Captain Fanelli is persisting in his challenge, and possibly Major Attlee may.be goaded into positive rudeness. It will strike millions of people that Major Attlee's comments on duelling, which express the attitude* of all really civilised men, also apply to war. War is certainly a e barbarous method of liquidating quarrels, and it puts a premium on bullying. A growing public opinion considers it obsolete. Italy proposes, apparently, to apply this barbarous method to a quarrel with, a country towards which she has two obligations—the first under an arbitration treaty, and the second under their common membership of the League £of Nations. Italy is a great military nation and naval Power. Abyssinia is an agricultural and pastoral community living in a country that is not yet even fully explored. Is Italy not acting as a bully? England abolished the duel long and in this respect showed herself more civilised than some oi her neighbours. Sha is now in the v yan of the movement to regard javar as equally barbarous and anti-social.