A SENSE OF HUMOUR DAMAGES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 87, 9 October 1937, Page 27

A SENSE OF HUMOUR DAMAGES

For years the Governments of Hungary have tried every means within their power to abolish duelling. There are strict laws forbidding it and public opinion is strongly against it, yet the practice prevails, says a writer in the "San Francisco Chronicle." Now, at last, it appears that the practice of gentlemen scorning legal means of settling differences to use a lethal method governed by a code of etiquette stricter than any law is to become gradually extinct because Karoly Peyer, a member of Hungary's Parliament and former Cabinet Minister, has employed ridicule to exterminate this out-of-date remnant of medieval chivalry. When Peyer, after criticising him in a political speech, was challenged by Janos Csoka, a police official in Ujpest, near Budapest, he wrote Csoka:— "If, in opposition to the Fifth Commandment, you insist on fighting a duel with me, I would have to choose a weapon in the use of which I am proficient. I served in the artillery and in aviation during the war and I am only versed in their fighting methods. I will desist from settling our differences by methods used in the Air Force. But since lam the challenged person and I am entitled to choose the manner in which the duel should be fought, I insist on artillery methods. "Kindly ask the Minister of War to i place at our disposal two cannon and

THE DUEL

i sufficient rounds of ammunition. I suggest that one of us should place himself on top of the Gellert Hill with one gun, the other on top of the Svab Hill with the other. The one who blows up his opponent will win." This is the first instance in duelling history of an opponent suggesting cannon as duel weapons. It put Csoka in the ridiculous position of being unable to go through with a challenge he himself proposed. When it got into the papers the incident became a laughing matter and the duelling code was made a subject of joking in Hungary, where until now it has been regarded as so serious a matter among aristocrats that not even the late Prime Minister (Gyula Gomboes) dared to refuse a challenge. Two years ago he fought a duel with pistols with Tibor Eckhardt, the Leader of the Opposition, and both he and Eckhardt were imprisoned for two days for violating the anti-duelling law. . Though old conservatives criticised Peyer for his letter, it has won wide commendation because among a majority of Hungarians it was considered a national disgrace when foreign newspapers devoted headlines for weeks to Dr. Ferenc Sarga, who fought a series of nine duels in rapid succession. While Sarga was a front page figure on two continents, most local papers ignored his doings completely. Newspapers pointed out that Sarga s nine duels with men who had allegedly laughed at his marriage was no more ridiculous than the recent duel two surgeons fought over a difference of opinion upon the treatment of a patient..