Public opinion in A.ustria-Hungary is evidently about to fake a
sudden but wholesome somersault on the subject of duelling. An anti-duelling appeal issued in the Viennese papers of last Saturday has met with a response as unprecedented as it was unexpected. "It bears," writes the well-informed Vienna. correspondent of the Times, "some three hundred signatures, including the cream of the nobility, fifteen former Cabinet Ministers, several ex-diplomatists, fifty-five Members of the Upper House, nearly all the Presidents of the provincial Diets, and a large number of Deputies. The whole of Austrian society is represented. A list of such influential names has never figured in this country on any manifesto of the kind." The signatories, realising that mere resolutions will effect nothing, propose the formation of a Committee of action, and "will endeavour to found courts or councils of honour, so that anybody feeling himself offended may find a remedy consistent with modern culture?' It looks, in short, as though duelling would die, not because it is a "method of barbarism," or that it is generally recognised that "in a false quarrel there is no true valour," but because it is on the way to become unfashionable.
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