PIUS X. AND DUELLING

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 22, 2 June 1904, Page 17

PIUS X. AND DUELLING

EUTER is generally fossicking about in odd *j i fraljh corners of Europe in search of sensation. S §S& For some time n °t ' g°t the color,' y' [W t)ut a few days ago i<} announced a ' find ' a^ I - nnstruck ' in tne Austrian Tyrol. Here V^v^T 1S ne news as it has come to our shores :— 4^wT* ' i{euler s Agency states that a sensation <• has been caused at Innsbruck by the Pope decorating two members of the Catholic bnion who, through declining to participate in duels, forfeited their military commissions The Pope is placed m direct opposition to the Austrian army authorities.' The announcement of ' a sensation ' is, we think, a trifle exaggerated Surprise and wonderment are essential elements to ' a sensation ' as the term js here intended And among the well instructed and Catholic population, civil and military, of the Austrian Tyrol, the Church's teaching on duelling is so well known that the action of the Holy 'Father, as- described above, would appear perfectly natural and consistent. Moreoxer, shortly alter the dismissal of the two officers relerred to above— Marquis Taki and Count Ladochowski— Leo XIII. iccened them in audience with every sign oi high honor and affection. lie, moreoyer, addressed ■a letter oi rebuke to the Kmperor Francis Joseph for having petnntted the degradation of two such bravehearted Christian &oldieis Even Frederick the Great oi Prussia referred to duellists as ' that tribe of murdcicrs,' called duelling ' a barbarous custom,' and denounced the misnamed ' code of honor ' as a tissue of prejudices and lalse opinions. Such, too, is the teaching oi the Catholic Chinch Duelling, such as we refer to. is regarded by her as actual or constructive murder. \o Catholic may hold or teach that a man may accept the gage of private combat even to sa,ve his reputation for courage or to retain his position, no matter vvhat it may be, in the army The Church excommunicates not alone the principals m a duel, but the seconds as well, and all who in any way counsel or promote :-uch combats and depmes of Chustian burial all who are slam m those foolish and criminal encounters * Duelling should disappear with the incoming of common sense and religion, just as profanity should go out with the decline oi un-Christian coarseness and vulgarity of manners. The one is an outrage on good sense, the other on propriety. But in the Austrian and German armies theie has been, lor over a century, a marked return towards barbarism The degenerate influence of the alleged ' code of lumoi ' began to assert itself in I'nissia about 178(i The o.iward course of its tyranny was eight > ears ago tiaced from that date till 1896 by Professor \on Below, oi the University of M'unster (Westphalia), in a work entitled ' Duelling and the Germanic Code of Honor.' He gives the following melancholy account of the state of things in Prussia in JX')fi, and Ins words may be deemed to hold good for the whole oi the Gemran and Austrian armies — • Whilst the State on the one hand practically never punishes duellists, on the other it prosecutes with the most reckless seventy those who refuse to duel. The

State punishes the officer who will not fight a duel— wjho, in the words of the 'Emperor Joseph 11., holds himself to be something better than a Roman gladiator—with dismissal from the service without any mercy . . . He (an officer) has only to choose between a life of comfort, in which duelling will maintain him. or a life full o! privations, into which a refusal to duel will plunge him. . As things arc now, one mv,4 esteem nruch more highly the courage of that oflicor who is openly opposed to duelling than that of the officer who accepts the prtol, ( 'orced into h^ irVr"' by the State The latter may just as well fue the pistol through L,uv,aidn.r, despau, ihdokiiLC, or ton\ enicntc, as through bravery.' It requires a high order of courage to face and defy the loss of position and social ostracism that follow a icfiusal to duel in the German and Austrian armies But instances of such courage aie, happily, sometimes found. Marquis Taki declined acceptance of a challenge issued to him by a foul-mouthed insultcr ol himself and defamer of a lady of high jbirth and blameless life Samuel Butler sums up the position by the mouth of Hudibras : • * Quoth he : That man is sure to lose That fouls his hands with dirty foes , For where no honor's to be gained. 'Tis thrown away in toeing maintained ' ' First,' said Marqtiis Taki, 'no gentleman is called on to fight a slanderer ; and. secondly, I, as a Catholic, object on principle to duelling.' An officers' so-called ' court of honor ' branded the sturdy Marqyis as j coward , and, on their recommendation, the Minister oi War cancelled his commission. Count Lcdochoaski wrote to the Marquis, commending him for his conduit as a man and a Christ ian officer And for this high crime the Count [ too, was dismissed from the army The papal decorations that now adorn 'their gallant breasts are the Crosses of Valor oi moral bia\er\. earned under circumstances more difficult than are presented amidst the fierce dm and conflict of war * We are not as lar in time as we are in change of heart from the roystenng, drinking days when duelling entered as closely into the marrow of the cmlian and military life of the British Isles as it does to-day nito that of the Austrian and German armies. The Duke oi York, Canning. Castlereagh, the Dukes of Buekinghim. Bedford, and Wellington. Lord Wuuhelsea, and hundreds of minor note endeavored to dri'l little tunnels m the bodies oi political opponents When Charles James Fox denounced the Government for issuing bad gunpowder to the army, lie was challenged by Mr Adam, Secretary for War Adam contrived to insert his bullet bene.t-Ui the skin of a non-vital pait ot his .opponent's anatomy, when the incorrigible Charles James sent tins verbal shot across the measured fit teen paces • • A dim, you'd have killed me if you hadn't used Go\ eminent powder.' The wild drinking customs of the time were A prolific cause of ' affairs oi honor ' One morning, for instance, a Galway Squire was ' disco\erod ' bld/ing away with a pair of hair-tnggered duelling pistols ot an ace of spades nailed to an oak tree in his paik lie explained the circumstance to his monderme; fnend : ' I've a dinner 'party of friends this e\enmg, and I'm getting my pistol hand in practice ' Relusal of a challenge by any one out of Holy Orders meant— as it docs in Austro-German military circles to-day— mimediaie expulsion from club and social circle. The last duel was fought in Scotland in 1822 ; in England so late as 1815, in Ireland still later— m 1851 The withering ridicule of the dramatists— the antics of Mansie Waugh and the emipty bragging of the cowardly Bob Acres— did much to strangle off duelling in the British Isles A fatal encounter between two British officers in 1813 led to amendments m the Articles of War that made this sort of encounter too perilous in the army It will take drastic measures to stamp out duelling among army officers in Austria and Germany Such a consummation can hardly be hoped for so long as tins form of murder is encouraged by high-placed military officials