No fair-minded person will deny that the duel is a relic of mediævalism; but neither ought any fair-minded person to doubt that if the relic persists in surviving in the teeth of modern conditions, there must exist some reason for this phenomenon.

To anyone living in Austria this reason is not far to seek. Wherever the State makes it its business to protect the honour of the individual, the individual himself is exempt of this care; but where the protection is non-existent or inadequate, a system of self-protection unavoidably evolves, and, likewise, unavoidably takes the form of brute-force—that elementary method of vindicating one's rights, than which even our heights of civilisation has discovered none more effectual—as see the latest things in wars.

But Austria has laws on the subject—I hear someone say—quite a lot of laws; and the prosecutions for Ehrenbeleidigung (injury of honour) are common, and frequently end with a verdict against the injurer. True, they are common—so common, in fact, that they have come to be held most significantly cheap, the verdict, more frequently than not, failing to bring conviction to the minds of the lookers-on. Quibbles of law are fatally apt to twist the meaning out of the entire process; neither are proofs even of positive facts always forthcoming. Thus, for example, if someone has called me a donkey and I prosecute him in consequence, I am bound clearly to prove that the epithet is misplaced, which even people who are not donkeys are sometimes at a loss to do on the spur of the moment.