WITH SABRES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 38, 15 February 1937, Page 8

WITH SABRES.

HUNGARIAN DUEL. Doctor's Fight in Defence of Wife's Honour. OPPONENT THEICE WOUNDED. United Press Association.—Copyright. (Recoivpd 3 p.m.) BUDAPEST, February 14. '"I want to get them off my chest," said Franz Sarga, a doctor who challenged 19 men to duels. He was referring to his three remaining duels, one of which he fought to-day with an ex-suitor of his wife's, Vitez de Yazsony, a bank official. This leaves him one duel against a civil servant and another against a former opponent, who was wounded when police intervened. Yazsony recently testified against Dr. Sarga in the latter's lawsuit against his wife's family. Dr. Sarga, subsequently refused to acknowledge Yazsony's salutation, declaring that he replied to greetings only from gentlemen. The resist was a duel of 14 rounds with sterilised Italian sabres in a fencing school, lasting 00 minutes. The contestants stripped to the waist and wore neck bandages. Dr. Sarga, with his customary "gorilla yell," in the seventh round evaded Yazsony's thrust and seriously wounded his opponent in the hip. A surgeon bandaged the wound and the seconds vainly urged a reconciliation. The duel was resumed and Vazsony was wounded in the r.~ck in the eighth round and broke his knee in the fourteenth. The doctors then stopped the contest. Dr. Sarga, penniless husband of a wife of aristocratic family, issued the challenges to duels "in defence of my wife's honour." A few days before Christmas he offered, in celebration of the birth of his first child, a daughter, to withdraw the challenges if the men concerned apologised.