Comic Duels

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 17 April 1926, Page 9

Comic Duels

Duelling in the Bods de Boulogne, the famous Paris park, must- stop. The police are thoroughly angered, and determined to prosecute. This promiscuous firing of pisitols is too dangerous—not for the d.uellisifcs, but for the birds and deer which live in that forest, at the edge of Paris. So runs a recent Paris dispatch. Duelling in recent decades has become a, somewhat harmless pastime, the message goes on to say. In fact, duelling pistols are the Press agent’s tools in France, just as an actress’s jewels got her columns of publicity in America.

The recent duel, which took, place at daybreak on a grey December .morning in the Paro des Princes, at the edge of the Bois, between ,a dramatic critic and the son of an actress, whose playing the critic had dared to hint. was. amateurish, was typical.

The critic, whose lace was slapped by the actress’s son, immediately sent for liis second. They were unable to find a solution other than a duel with pistols at 30 paces. The next, morning two cars drove up in the grey dawn. iSix men stepped out. Back to back, the principals stepped out to the fatal 30 paces. At a command they turned. In the best novels a pistol should have cracked at this .lnomept. The critic, a gallant gentleman, waited for the other to fire first. Thei seconds, gallant gentlemen, waited for both; to fire. Neither fired. The critic got tired of waiting, fired over the heackof the enemy, and the six got back in their cars. Two cars drove off in the grey dawn. , But the police gob busy. Tney deliberated long over the policy to be followed. Plainly the law wa.s broken when the 'single shot was fired. If the two cared to risk a wild shot which would have missed going over their heads and had landed by mistake in the body of either, that was their affair. But someone must look after the animals.