IS DUELLING WRONG?
Right and wrong are not, as some suppose, clearly defined, as are black
and white. Right and wrong so overlap that it is difficult, except for a
clergyman, to decide which is which. Circumstances may turn the balance,
and what is right under some circumstances is very wrong under others.
A man may pose as being very good, whereas he is merely a coward; he may
refuse to fight, not because he thinks it wrong to kill, but because he is
too cowardly.
Wrong often poses as right.
Right and wrong are chiefly a matter of convention, and vary with
different races of men, and at different periods.
What is wrong to-day may be right to-morrow. The list of right and wrong I
give below, is only made up to date, and is subject to revision at any
time.
Probably by the time this book sees the light, this list may be entirely
out-of-date.
In early times holy men did things which would land them in prison if
they were alive in these days.
In the cruel ages when men knew no better, St. Francis of Assisi preached
(like Buddha) kindness to every living thing, and called the birds “our
little brothers.”
In the present superior age, St. Francis would spend his life in prison
from inability to pay the fines imposed on him for feeding birds.
Kindness to animals was never a popular virtue. It is considered “soppy,”
“sickly sentimentality.”
Men have always liked to bully horses to show what good riders they are,
and what “control” they have over them. They think it draws forth
admiration to be seen knocking a horse about. It shows their mental
superiority over a mere brute.
Small men like to be seen lugging a big good-natured dog along by a chain,
threatening him with a whip. It shows their great brain power over mere
matter.
The feeding of starving birds in a hard winter and kindness to cats has
always been merely tolerated, even before it became a crime to do so.
In the year 1917, in London, a poor old woman went off crying bitterly,
unable to pay the fine imposed on her for giving a few crumbs out of her
own scanty meal to some birds. But even in less enlightened times, in the
days when birds were pitied, such doubtful conduct was not much approved
of except in the case of old maids or little girls. The former were also
allowed to keep cats and parrots. Such kindness was “too mawkish” for men
and boys to stoop to. Boys should only stoop to pick up stones to throw at
birds and cats. “_Boys_ will be boys” and it is a pity to spoil their
spirit.
Such boys are in their element now.
A great wave has arisen against mawkish sentimentality. Formerly societies
were formed to enforce close seasons for birds and animals, to give them a
chance to live in peace during the breeding season, and to prevent the
extinction of fast vanishing species, and the Clergy instructed their
parishioners in kindness to animals and the “mawkish” protection of
defenceless rodents during the breeding season.
But this is changed in the present superior age.
Rabbits and hares can now be killed all the year round. A doe rabbit,
dying in a snare or steel trap with a broken leg held by sharp steel
teeth, lies suckling her young which have come to her, and the young die
of starvation when she has died in torture.
Committees are formed in villages, the Vicar as chairman, which give
prizes to the boys who destroy the most birds’ nests and kill the parent
birds and their young. Little girls are given prizes for killing the most
butterflies.
Those children who are too young yet to be able to kill birds are not
forgotten. They are given prizes, which they take home to their proud
parents, for the greatest number of flies they can kill.
When I was a boy, in the cruel bad times, I was told I would go to a very
unpleasant place when I died if I was so wicked and cruel as to kill flies
or pull their wings and legs off whilst they were alive.
I understand this game of pulling wings and legs off is also now played by
boys with young birds taken out of nests.
How otherwise can two boys fairly divide a nestful of young birds if they
are of an uneven number?
I was at a village fête where such prizes were given and I expressed
surprise that a boy did not get first prize for a very big heap of dead
flies. I was told that he had collected the dead flies found on the window
ledges the previous autumn, and added them to his heap of kills, so he was
not eligible.
It is praiseworthy to kill flies, but wrong to collect those already dead.
I must apologize for this long digression, but it was necessary in order
that my following analysis of what is conventionally right and wrong might
be properly understood.
As right and wrong at present stand, a man in uniform, if he meets a man
in a different uniform (a man, with whom he has no quarrel, and of whose
existence he was ignorant up to that moment), and he is told to fight that
man, and kills him, he becomes a _hero_. The more he kills, the greater
hero he is.
If on the other hand, this man in uniform quarrels with a man in the
_same_ uniform as himself, or who is in civilian dress, or if he is
himself in civilian dress, and if, as the result of this quarrel they
fight (even if a fair fight, with friends of each man present to see that
it is a fair fight) and he kills the man, then he is a _murderer_.
A murderer must be murdered; that is his punishment for murdering a man.
It might be imagined that if the man who murders another has to be
murdered himself by another man, who thus also becomes a murderer, it
would end by everyone being killed except the last man.
This is not so. When a civilian has murdered another in fair fight, the
man appointed to murder this murderer does not become a murderer, he is an
executioner, and is paid for murdering the other man, and the incident
closes.
Whatever wrong a man receives from another, he must not fight him. He must
not even slap his face. That is an assault and wrong.
He must accept a sum of money considered equivalent to the wrong done him.
Some men are not satisfied with this. They consider receiving money from
their opponent a degradation, and even the suggestion of such a course, an
insult.
In countries where duelling is still allowed, they have a solution--the
duel.