But taking every German institution in turn, the case is the same; and it is not a case of mere bloodshed or military bravado.  The duel, for example, can legitimately be called a barbaric thing; but the word is here used in another sense.  There are duels in Germany; but so there are in France, Italy, Belgium, and Spain; indeed, there are duels wherever there are dentists, newspapers, Turkish baths, time-tables, and all the curses of civilisation; except in England and a corner of America.  You may happen to regard the duel as a historic relic of the more barbaric States on which these modern States were built.  It might equally well be maintained that the duel is everywhere the sign of high civilisation; being the sign of its more delicate sense of honour, its more vulnerable vanity, or its greater dread of social disrepute.  But whichever of the two views you take, you must concede that the essence of the duel is an armed equality.  I should not, therefore, apply the word barbaric, as I am using it, to the duels of German officers, or even to the broadsword combats that are conventional among the German students.  I do not see why a young Prussian should not have scars all over his face if he likes them; nay, they are often the redeeming points of interest on an otherwise somewhat unenlightening countenance.  The duel may be defended; the sham duel may be defended.

What cannot be defended is something really peculiar to Prussia, of which we hear numberless stories, some of them certainly true.  It might be called the one-sided duel.  I mean the idea that there is some sort of dignity in drawing the sword upon a man who has not got a sword; a waiter, or a shop assistant, or even a schoolboy.  One of the officers of the Kaiser in the affair at Saberne was found industriously hacking at a cripple.  In all these matters I would avoid sentiment.  We must not lose our tempers at the mere cruelty of the thing; but pursue the strict psychological distinction.  Others besides German soldiers have slain the defenceless, for loot or lust or private malice, like any other murderer.  The point is that nowhere else but in Prussian Germany is any theory of honour mixed up with such things; any more than with poisoning or picking pockets.  No French, English, Italian or American gentleman would think he had in some way cleared his own character by sticking his sabre through some ridiculous greengrocer who had nothing in his hand but a cucumber.  It would seem as if the word which is translated from the German as “honour” must really mean something quite different in German.  It seems to mean something more like what we should call “prestige.”