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 b.u.t.terflies.

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 fete 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 a.s.sault 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

REMARKS ON DUELLING

The mere word duel raises a smile amongst the empty headed. Hardly any one thinks for himself; he takes his thoughts ready made, like his tea when he gets up in the morning.

He opens his paper; in the paper he reads "So-and-so is the wickedest man on earth," good; in future, whenever he hears of anything So-and-so's done, it is wrong; and if he sees So-and-so "on the pictures," he hisses with all his might.

Next, he reads that "such a one is the best and cleverest man on earth,"

this is enough. "Such a one" can do no wrong, and if he sees "Such a one"

on the cinematograph screen, he stamps and shouts with delight.

In prehistoric times someone wrote a joke in arrow-head characters about duelling; as comic subjects are scarce and have to be used over and over again, duelling became a standard "joke," and therefore the sort of people I have mentioned grin the moment they hear the word, as they roar with laughter when they see a "comic" actor.

It always amuses me when an actor who is a "comedian" attempts a serious part.

As he walks in with a despairing air, the audience shriek with laughter (because he is labelled as "comic" in their brains). The actor says in a pathetic way "my wife went out starving to beg for bread, and she found the child had fallen in the fire, and was burnt to death when she returned at length with food."

The audience simply roll with laughter, and gasp "is he not killing?"

I merely make this digression to show how difficult it is to make people think for themselves, especially on the subject of duelling.

Duelling is a "comic subject" to them, and that is the end of it.

Just as war is necessary, so is duelling necessary. Duelling is to the individual, what war is to the nation.

The man who laughs at the word duel would not laugh if he were standing before another's pistol, and knew that within a second of the word "fire,"

he would have a bullet in his breast and be dead.

He does not differentiate between the "advertis.e.m.e.nt duels" which sometimes take place on the Continent, where neither combatant intends to shoot the other, but merely wants to get his name in the papers, and a real duel by which a wronged man seeks redress.

In a sword duel a man, if young and active, can avoid being fatally injured. He can keep all but his right wrist and knee out of danger, and as soon as he gets a scratch on them, give up the fight on the plea of being "at a disadvantage."

But with pistols it is different, provided the seconds have not (in order to prevent a fatal termination) altered the sights or reduced the powder charge. In fact, if he has an accurate and properly loaded pistol in his hands, a good shot can make certain of hitting his opponent.

When such a one misses his man or hits him in a non-vital part, it is because he has done so purposely, not wanting to kill the man.

Sometimes a man who feels he is in the wrong, stands up to be shot at, and either misses his opponent on purpose, or does not shoot at all.

On a recent occasion, when a duellist had not fired when the word was given, someone had the bad taste to ask him why he did not shoot. The answer was "I forgot."

This was the occasion for a stream of jokes; the writers of these jokes did not of course appreciate the chivalry of not shooting, and the delicacy of the reply. They made all sorts of silly remarks about "absentmindedness," only exposing their own empty-headedness thereby.

Having now cleared the ground, I will in the next chapter give details of how a pistol duel is conducted, and how to train for it.

In countries where duelling is allowed, the upper cla.s.ses know how to fence, and to shoot the duelling pistol; they need no teaching if called out. Any one who has learnt to shoot from instructions given in this book needs no further teaching. He only needs to be told the rules. There are, however, a few points in which duelling differs from the rapid-fire practice I have given, one being the position the pistol is raised from, and when it is permissible to raise it.