FRANCE: Ignoble Dueling

Orthodox members of the fashionable Parisian Cercle de I' Escrime (Fencing Club) all but wept last week as two of its members settled an affair of honor with four-ounce boxing gloves. "Duelist" Schapira, a prominent Swiss resident of Paris, easily cuffed into submission his adversary, M. H. Tersieff, a onetime boxing champion of Roumania. While members of the Cercle were deploring the "execrable dueling form" of both men, a despatch from Bucharest announced a duel still more scandalous.

A young society woman of 18, whose name was deleted by the Hungarian censor, challenged to a duel with sabres a young man of equal rank, who had befouled her name while in his cups. When they faced each other accompanied by seconds, in a wood near Budapest, he stripped to the waist, according to the Hungarian dueling code, and demanded that she do likewise. When she refused he laughed, departed. Vexed, she wept.