DUELLING IN GERMANY.
IT is a notable example of the ease with which we get accustomed to improvements that the persistence of duelling in Germany strikes us as something unintelligible. We forget that it is not so long since it was common in England, and that there are people still living who shook their heads over its disuse and predicted that all manner of evils would necessarily follow upon the abolition of the oue sanction which men of a certain type held in any respect. Possibly by the middle of the next century duelling may be as much out of date in Germany as it already is in England. For the moment, however, this reform seems a great way off ; nor is it at all probable that the present movement in its favour will do much to bring it about. The history of duelling seems to show, first, that nothing but a change in public opinion will put an end to it, and next, that this change in public opinion will not be effected by an appeal to religious considerations. Every section of the Christian Church has in turn denounced it, but it has only flourished the more. The immediate fear of a narrow public opinion, with the prospect of being set down as a coward, has outweighed the distant fear of divine displeasure. Yet the example of this country seems to prove that this narrow public opinion, which the strongest minds feel powerless to ignore, is very easily changed if the right treatment happens to be applied to it. It yields at once to ridicule or to vulgarising associations. Treat duelling as murder, and it is doubtful whether you will appreciably lessen the number of duellists. Treat it as something on a level with a street row, and there is a chance that it will go wit of fashion. Imprisonment with hard labour is a nis..e deterrent penalty than death, even than death by hanging. But then, before Legislatures will decree this penalty, or Judges inflict it, there must be a general agreement that duelling has become ridiculous, and a general resolve to put it down. And so we are brought back to the point from which we started. If we could judge from the attitude of the Imperial Diet of Germany, the desired change in public opinion would not be far off. No one attempted to defend duelling. The Centre party were the authors of an interpellation against it. The Imperial Chancellor declared himself distressed by the frequency of duels, and anxious to discover what measures can be taken to put the law in force against them. The Socialists denounced it, the Radicals denounced it, the National Liberals did not defend it, the Con- servatives reprobated it. In the Diet, at all events, the duellist had no friends, and in the end a resolution calling upon the Government to use all the means at their disposal to combat the practice was unanimously accepted. The German Government is not unaccustomed to leaving such requests unnoticed, and we may be pretty sure that it will adopt this attitude in the present in- stance. Indeed, the Chancellor's statement seemed expressly designed to prepare the Diet for this disappoint- ment. " There is no ground whatever," he said, " for the belief that the organs of the State Executive, whose task it is, so far as possible, to prevent the commission of criminal actions, did not fulfil their duty with regard to duels. "But those who are determined to fight will always find ways and means to carry out their purpose." It is no wonder that the words were received with a burst of derisive laughter. As duels go on without let or hindrance, and as the State has already, according to the Imperial Chancellor, used all the means in its power to prevent them, there is not much to be gained by passing a resolution calling upon the Government to do what they have been doing all along. It will be seen that the Imperial Chancellor seemed to hold the duty of the Government in relation to duelling to be limited to prevention. He evidently felt that he had completely exonerated himself from blame when he reminded the Diet that even in the case of duels of which previous knowledge had been obtained it was not possible to hinder them. That the Government are bound to punish when they have failed to prevent does not seem to have occurred to him. He recognises that the public sense of justice demands that the laws should be obeyed by all sections of the population without distinction of class or profession, but as yet he has been unable to devise any means of satisfying this demand. We need not wonder at the futility of the Chancellor's observations. No doubt he is just as well aware of it as anybody else. He has to appear before the Diet as the representative of the State Executive, and he knows all the time that the true State Executive is against him. There is no diffi- culty in putting down duelling in Germany. There is no need even of educating public opinion into a sterner dis- approval of it. It could be abolished in a moment by the act of one man. The German Emperor has only to make known that any man who fights a duel will incur his personal displeasure,that he will not be permitted to receive or retain any post in the Army or about the Court, and the thing is done. There are sanctions far more binding than laws in the regulations of the Court and the Army, and these sanctions are virtually the creation of the Sovereign. In this respect the suppression of duelling would be more easily effected in Germany than in France. In France it would have to be done by the operation of the ordinary law, and in the case of offences which are not such in the eyes of the public the ordinary law is liable to be made of no effect by the action of juries. But in Germany it might be done straight away by the operation of a particular class opinion, and in all probability this particular class opinion would submit, not perhaps without murmuring, but still without serious resistance, to the expressed will of the Emperor. We say that this would happen in all probability, because it is conceivable that the passion for duelling—the conviction that in a whole class of cases it is the one mode of redress that is really open to a gentle- man—might prove to be so deeply seated that even the Emperor's command would be disregarded. But we do not think this at all likely. The German Emperor has too many means of giving effect to his wishes to make disobedience to them in the Army or in the Court any- thing else than exceptional. We do not expect, therefore, that the resolution against the Diet will have any immediate effect as regards the suppression of duelling. Any advance in this direction will be due to a different cause. The debates of Monday and Tuesday may make the Emperor think. He is not an irreligious man, though his regard for religion occasionally takes shapes that to us seem strange, and it is possible that he may now be led to ask himself whether duelling can possibly be defended on religious grounds. If he comes to the belief that it cannot be, that the letter and the spirit of the Christian law are altogether opposed to it, that it can only be justified on pleas which would equally justify any other act of defiance to that law, his attitude towards it will insensibly change. This is the only direction in which the prospect offers any encouragement. The Emperor must be the first convert, and his conversion may be brought nearer by the knowledge that the Im- perial Diet is against the practice. Even the most auto- cratic of Sovereigns is happier when he is in accord with his people than when he is in opposition to them, and it is just possible that the German Emperor may be more willing to deal sharply with duelling now that he knows that it has no defenders in the Diet.
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