Part 28 (1/2)

Byron, speaking of duelling, in _Don Juan_, says:

It has a strange quick jar upon the ear, That c.o.c.king of a pistol, when you know A moment more will bring the sights to bear Upon your person, twelve yards off or so; A gentlemanly distance, not too near If you have got a former friend or foe; But after being fired at once or twice, The ear becomes more Irish, and less nice.

Canto IV.: Stanza XLI.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

OUGHT DUELLING TO BE ABOLISHED?

It is a mistake to think that it is to the universal satisfaction that duelling is no longer allowed in England.

Probably it was abolished, owing to some agitation by a few cranks, like that against stag-hunting and Sunday amus.e.m.e.nts, and even at the time of the abolition, there were many who thought duelling was a necessity and its abolition a mistake.

Even a judge of the present time doubts if his abolition was not a mistake.

On May 17, 1911, it is reported that at the dinner of the Union Society of London, Lord Justice Vaughan Williams said:

In recent years a statement that man is a liar does not bear the weight it used to do.

There were times when if one man called another a liar, that man was called to account for it, it might be even in a duel. But long since duels came to an end.

If a man called an Englishman a liar in a public place, that Englishman had a habit of knocking that man down; I am afraid that habit is dying out.

He said he was sorry he had come to that conclusion, that the ”world in general, as it was accepted in England was coming to think that it did not matter very much if one's neighbour called one a liar or not.

”One would smile, meet him in society, go out and play golf with him, and shake hands with him.

”He wished people would resent more this imputation of being liars.”

”Vanoc” in the _Referee_ newspaper said:

For some reasons the abolition of duelling is a mistake. Insolent and offensive language is now too frequently indulged in with impunity ...

the best rule of all is never to take liberties yourself, and never to allow liberties to be taken with you, and to remember that self-defence is still the n.o.ble art.

Over the signature of ”Les Armes de Combat,” a writer after referring to ”the deplorable” inefficiency of the ma.s.s of English officers with the revolver, says:

The reason Englishmen take no interest (as a nation) in pistol shooting, whereas pistol shooting is of national interest in countries where pistol duelling still exists, is because in those countries every man of the upper cla.s.ses, soldier or civilian, has at the back of his mind the possibility that he may be called out.

Amongst this cla.s.s therefore, fencing and pistol-shooting is a national sport, with a spice of utility behind it. In Great Britain this incentive has ceased to exist.

Whilst duelling is allowed in one country and not in another, it puts an inhabitant of the latter country in a very unenviable position if he is insulted in the other country.

He cannot s.h.i.+eld himself behind the plea that duelling is not customary in his own country, without laying himself open to be called a coward, and yet he must not fight.

At the actual time I was writing the above, an English officer was having to submit to the indignity of being tried for murder under circ.u.mstances in which, in a duelling country, he would have had a perfect right to kill the man.