"Howls When You Hurt Him."

Very well.  That is an intelligible policy; and in that sense an intelligible argument.  An army endangered by foreigners may do the most frightful things.  But then we turn the next page of the Kaiser’s public diary, and we find him writing to the President of the United States to complain that the English are using dumdum bullets and violating various regulations of The Hague Conference.  I pass for the present the question of whether there is a word of truth in these charges.  I am content to gaze rapturously at the blinking eyes of the true, or positive, barbarian.  I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we said that violating The Hague Conference was “a military necessity” to us; or that the rules of the conference were only a scrap of paper.  He would be quite pained if we said that dumdum bullets “by their very frightfulness” would be very useful to keep conquered Germans in order.  Do what he will, he cannot get outside the idea that he, because he is he and not you, is free to break the law and also to appeal to the law.  It is said that the Prussian officers play at a game called Kriegspiel, or the war game.  But in truth they could not play at any game, for the essence of every game is that the rules are the same on both sides.

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, Spain; indeed, there are duels wherever there are dentists, newspapers, Turkish baths, time tables, and all the curses of civilization—­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 civilization, being the sign of its more delicate sense of honor, 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 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.

The One-Sided Prussian Duel.