The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-02-21
DUELLoS WITHOUT GUNS.
But WITH A LARGE PERCENTAGE
OF TRAGIC RESULTS.

Nearly as Observation-Disclosures
Duels-Clubs and Spears FIatten-
ing the Bumps of InsoIence-I<icIS-
ing Matches.
From the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Old Kaiser Wilhelm's interviewing hui
mors were stimulated by smoke and mer-
itorious field maneuvers but his successor
has to be tackled after a successful deer
hunt.
1T is true that your majesty proposes
to prohibit dueling altogether" asked
Breslau reporter, who caught him in the
game park of Ratibor few weeks ago.
His majesty grinned. "They never
heard of old Hamanns manifesto. did
they?" he replied with counter ques-
ton.
This Hamann. 1.-THE Magus of the
North" as he called himself, was an
East Prussian myth, would-be Ply
thagoras, who once published a circular
ordering his disciples to preserve the
clearness of their metaphysical faculties
by avoiding to fal lin love"
Can a man help getting in a passion?
Philosophers have doubted it, and there is
no doubt that extreme anger is always
apt to take the form of detractiveness.
Love is creative wrath is mortiferous,"
says that same Hamann.
And the children of nature are largely
of the same opinion. "Yes,I believe l can
forgive my enemy" said an Ashantee
warrior, but ! first want to go and knock
him in the head"
French dandies shudder at the mention of
Texas rifle duels yet 1t would be a mistake
to suppose that the invention of gun
powder has made the ordeal of single COM
bat more fatal. The fury of resentment
scorns long-range contests as illustrated
by portentous instance In the battle of
threw away their rifles and rushed in with
hunting knives to get at the threats of
Peruvian brigade whose commander had
massacred their prisoners of war
Dagger duels are irrepressible among the
ot-headed nations of Southern Europe,
and an English resident of the Palermo
advises surgeons to visit the harbor hos
pital. of that city if they would study the
treatment of desperate wounds without
waiting for the next International war.
such slaughter-house work and such
powers of survival" he says: men with
more dagger wounds than Julius Caesar
smoking or shutting cards with their BAN
daged arms as If they had experienced
nothing but a slight sprain or bruise
Natural selection seems to have developed
a breed of knife-proof bipeds, all the rest
having got killed out in the continuous
tavern brawls."
In spite of the severe laws against con-
cealed weapons, every male adult almost
carries dirk knife somewhere or other
Just as in Spain, where paupers will part
with their last shirt sooner than with
their buen cuchillo.
Our next neighbOrs, too, practice the no.
BILE art of self-defense with cold steel and
value dry goods chiefly from a strategic
point of view. What makes you carry
that heavy blanket in midsummer" an
officer of the Brownsville garrison asked a
Greaser with wooden fresada
The sansculotte chuckled and pressed
his toga against his throat.
What do you mean? Is 1t your bed
perhaps, as well as your mantle?"
"Oh, have bed at home" grunted the
n hon ~ -
pect to parry dagger-knife with a linen
"A French politician valued words main
~ as means to conceal his thoughts
and the toga Virilis of the Mexican pelado
conceals a twelve-inch dagger but it also
acts as a shield. He watches a gang of
| roWd1eS with lynX-eyed miStruSt, and at
the first suspicious motion up goes his
woolen chest-protector in the form of a
| bundle twisted defty about his left arm,
! While his right rests on his hip, limiting
| his readiness for sudden departure from
| the plan of armed neutrality. There are
| districts of Northern Mexico where every
! able-bodied man is a dagger Virtuoso, as
every Tennessee mountaineer is a sharp
shooter, and few professional dueists of
| the Heidelberg Fecht-Boden could stand
| their ground against the rapid lunges of
a chuchillero with his trade tricks of
feints and undercuts. There are no pauses
in a Spanish-American cut-throat match
no chance for tumbling tactics and sprint
ing intermezzos, the contest is decided in
the first round and generally ends with
| a nome thrust or a QlSdD1nS SLASH across
| the knife arm--not necessarily the right,
for there are ambidextrous poniardists
that puzzle routine fighters as a left
handed boxer would puzzle the disciples
of Pollux. When the Spaniards domi-
neered the Netherlands the quarrels of
northern and southern DULLES were fire.
quently settled with unequal weapons
the champions of Holland preferring their
rapiers or long swords, but with results
that modified the confidence of their abil-
ity to keep a knifer at arms length
NPfhpTI9n6PTG
linquished their reliance on long-range
side arms, and the example of the AM
sterdam longshoremen made the dirk
knife the sailors weapon par excellence
though seafarers might also have learned
a trick or two from the dagger carriers
! of the far east-the truculent Dyaks and
Malays.
In ancient Rome the Numidians were
dreaded for their hardness with double
edged and often poisoned daggers. Hard
words and stabs followed as cause and eff
| feet in a dispute with those braves, and
so many Roman slave owners were assas-
sinated in their own houses that the jul
risconsults devised the horrible but effect
| i've safeguard known as the Lex ApoliiEis
| that made 1t the personal interest of iras-
chile coolies to turn their daggers into
pruning knives. Whenever a Roman cit
| izen was found murdered under circum-
! stances precluding the theory of suicide
| all his slaves who had not been chained or
| otherwise prevented from fighting in de-
! tense of their master were crucifed on the
next public highway, and on one occa-
| sion, quoted IN the Annals OF lacltuS.
not less than 400 serfs were executed in
! accordance with that law, though pub
lie sympathy protested, and an open re-
volt could be prevented only by formida-
BILE military escort.
Yet for all that, duels continued, and
! pagan moralist mentioned their frequency
in defense of the gladiatorial festivals.
''Why should those foreigners not be al
lowed to fight in the arenaY' he asks,
''since they are continually fighting among
themselves"
The Arabs Of Damascus used to inscribe
their dagger sheaths with verses of the
Koran and considered themselves bound
| to pardon an enemy if ne handed over his
poniard. Scripture text and all. II he had
once tnsheathed Il he had to abide the
consequences, and might be cut to pieces
even after he was down, Ike the Bulgar
cbieftain who in the presence of a west
ern traveller engaged a rival with
kind of short battle Ak resembling a
butchers cleaver," and, after a desperate
resistance. was stunned by blow over
the head and chopped into sausage meat
before he had regained consciousness.
With similar approach to Marquis Of
| Oueensberry rules the New Caledonian
isianders will accept a conditional sur
render IL an antagonist advances with his
! club reversed, presenting the handle as a
neace-offering But an exchange Of two