THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1902. A STRANGE SURVIVAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 1, 2 January 1902, Page 16

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1902. A STRANGE SURVIVAL.

vl§Ngp|'O change that has taken place in the social feel?l||JsN|h ing of English-speaking countries during the JKjfll P aht two hundred years has, perhaps, been r"""fj&&j! mor . e thorough-going than the wholesome sense °f ridicule with which duelling is now regarded by all classes. In most of the countries of jsP^g r Continental Europe — and especially in Ger- * many, Austria, France, and Italy — the social feeling in reference to ' affairs of honor ' — as they are called — remains to this hour practically what it was in the British Isles a century ago, when ' no gentleman was considered to have taken his proper station in life until he had " blazed," or— as it was sometimes said — "smelt powder." ' In the countries referred to above, fencing is still considered an equally necessary part of the education of anyone who aspires to become a public man, as was the neat handling of hair-triggered duelling pistols for over a hundred years in Great Briiain and Ireland, it is a strange anomaly of Continental life that, while encounters with six or twelve-inch knives are frowned upon by society and sternly suppressed by law, the police have eyes as blind as Nelson's for duels with the longer carving-knives that are known as swords. ' It is all a question of inches,' said Joseph de Maistre ; 4 to fight with a knife is criminal ; to fight with a sword is honorable.' The hw in the German Fatherland affects to regard slaying in a duel as murder. But duelling goes <raily on just the samp. The plaint made by the Rev. Peter Chalmers in 1822, in his curious Two Discourses on duelling, as to the lax administration of the law in Scotland, would seem to hold good in Germany in our day. And it recalls the amusing two-faced charge given by Judge Fletcher at the Sligo Assizes in 1812 on a duel in which, as the result of an ' accident,' a Major Hillas had depa-kd suddenly for a worse or better world. 4 The law,' remarked Judge Fletcher, in his charge to the jury, • says the killing of a man in a duel is murder, and therefore, in the discharge of my duty, I am bound to tell you it is murder. But 1 tell you at the same time, a fairer duel than this I never head of in the whole course of my life.'

la the early part of the last century the British Articles of War provided, in a way, for the establishment of a socalled 'court of Lonor' to regulate duels in the army. On different occasions King George HI. constituted the courtsmaital of two regiments into 'courts of honor' to arbitrate between pugnacious officers. Kaiser William, like his father, seems unwilling to suppress duelling in the army. He professes to see salvation in the compulsory reference of regimental squabbles to a similar court, and in fortressimprisonment (or the threat of it) to those who dare to dtaw an unauthorised sword or pull a forbidden trigger. But, to judge from its actions, the German military ' courts of honor ' seem calculated rath' r to increase than to diminish the number of those senseless encounters. Here, for instance, is a flagrant case from a recent issue of a London contemporary : ' The story of the death of Lieutenant Blaskowitz, as told by a Berlin correspondent, reaches the climax of the brutality to which duelling leads. The death of the unhappy man was murder pure and simple, which must be laid to the charge of a so-called "couit of honor." The lieutenant, who was twenty-live years of age, gave a supper to his comrades at the officers' mess. He drank to excess, and

two of them accompanied him home. They left him near his house, but after having gone some distance they decided to return and see whether he had made his way to the dwelling. He had not done so, but had fallen and lay asleep. They tried to lift him, and he, muddled and not knowing who they were, struck at them. Next morning he went to celebrate the eve of his wedding at Deutsch Eylau. The guests had just arrived for the marriage when he received a telegram summoning him to Insterburg, as he would, it stated, have to fight two officers who had challenged him. The wedding was put off and he hastened to Isterburg. When he arrived there and was informed of the ground of the challenge he professed his ignorance of the cause of offence — for he remembered nothing about it — and apologised to the officers. They accepted the apology, and one of them actually withdrew his challenge. The " court of honor," however — though the lieutenant's father, a Protestant minister, vehemently protested against its decision — insisted that the duel must not be abandoned. It duly took place, and Lieutenant Blaskowitz was shot dead. The members of this " court of honor " ought to be put upon their trial for murder.'

The frequency of 'affairs of honor' in Italy may be estimated by the following figures from Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics : ' A return of Italian duels down to 1890 shows that there were 2760, which resulted in 50 men killed, 1066 wounded, and 1644 unhurt. The percentage of combatants showed 30 military, 29 editors, 12 lawyers, and 29 per cent, various.' The risks look high, but, in reality, the damage done does not seem to raise those 2760 Italian duele notably above the level of so many football matches. French duels sometimes result in 'accidents.' But they have acquired the reputation of being almost as innocuous as the elaborate encounters between Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Lewis Carroll's Looking-glass Land. In Austria , a crusade against duelling is, under the aegis and blessing of the Church, being pushed with a vigor which bids fair to arouse public feeling against the despicable and criminal folly of the practice. The movement had its origin in the arbitrary dismissal of two gallant Catholic officers — Marquis Toki and Captain Ledochowski — from the army. 'J he former was cashiered for having, as a matter of conscience, had the Christian courage to keeD his hands clean of blood-guiltiness by declining to accept a, challenge ; the latter was deprived of his commission for having warmly commended, on moral and religious grounds, the action of his spirited comrade in arms.

And yet duelling is nominally prohibited by Austrian, as well as by German, law as a criminal offence. The law was equally emphatic in Great Britain when — from the Restoration till the nineteenth cetury was far into its first quarter — duels were almost as common as dining, shaving, and gambling. Hume, Blackstone, Cooke, Foster, and the rest lay down in emphatic terms the dicta thai ' single combat between any of the King's subjects is strictly prohibited by the laws of this realm,' that a duel is ' a grievous breach of the peace,' and that the slaying of a man in such an encounter is murder. But the social feeling of the time favored the appeal to hair-triggered pistols as the last arbiters of right and wrong, and old custom ' brazed it so ' that it was, for a long period, ' proof and bulwark against sense.' 'Mo man,' says a recent writer, 'who was not in Holy Orders couid dare — if he had any regard for his position in society — to shelter himself behind law, religion, and morality, and refuse a challenge to a duel. It would mean — such was the extravagant point to which it was deemed necessary to uphold the obligations of honor — his instant dismissal from any club or coterie to which he might belong. A refusal to fight when challenged led in every case to one inevitable conclusion — that it was due to cowardice. Therefore, rather than run the slightest risk of such a dishonorable charge, many a man willingly faced the pistol in the hand of a " dead shot " for the most trivial cause of quarrel. Indeed, in some cases the challenged was utterly oblivious of ever having given his adversary the faintest cause of offence.' Every well-regulated inn kept its pair of duelling pistols — ' in case.' Every electioneering campaign produced odd scores of ' meetings ' that were not intended to be public. Many a dinner party — where strong

drink circled round the board — terminated in a bit of ' blazing,' sometimes with only the dining-table between the combatants. A Galway squire, ' discovered ' by a neighbour in the act of ' potting ' at a target on a tree when the larks had scarcely shaken the night-dew off their wings, remarked in explanation : * I've a dinner party of friends this evening, and I'm getting my pistol hand into practice.' The parting legacy of another fighting squire of the period to his eldest son was a pile of debt and mortgages and the quaint advice — so redolent of the period : ' Never drink with your back to the fire, and never fight a duel with your face to the sun.' John Toler's sole inheritance was £50 and a pair of handsome silver-mounted pistols. In Curran's words, he ' shot himself up to the Bench,' and became Lord Norbury, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Many other fire-eaters like him occupied seats upon the Bench in Great Britain and Ireland, and the result was that the severe laws against duelling were rarely put into operation, and the infrequent prosecutions following ' misadventures ' from powder-blazing usually ended in acquittal. The change in public and social feeling regarding this form of single combat was slow, if radical. The last duel was fought in Scotland in 1822 — the year of the publication of Chalmers' Two Discourses ; in England in 1845 (fatal) ; and in Ireland (bloodless) just half a century ago, in 1851.

The Catholic Church has set the mark of her high reprobation of murder by duelling, and visits principals and seconds, if Catholics, with the most severe ecclesiastical censures. Priests and medical men are strictly forbidden to be present at any duel for the purpose of ministering to wounded or dying combatants. ' Duelling,' says a theological writer, 'is strictly forbidden by the Church. Anyone concerned in duelling becomes guilty of a grievous sin, and those playing the principal part become guilty of a double crime — by wilfully exposing themselves to death, and by attempting to take the life of another. The duel is only considered permissible as preventing greater disaster, or as conducive to the public welfare, as was the case when David fought Goliath (/. Kings, xvil, 50). The Church has forbidden duelling (even when the contest is not for life and death), and punishes with excommunication not only the parties themselves, but also all accomplices, counsellors, assistants, witnesses, and spectators, who by their presence approve and sanction it. He who perishes in a duel is likewise deprived of Christian burial.'