II.
“If we could return to the past, and witness an exhibition of sword-play as it was understood by the professors of only fifty years ago, what a contrast we should find with the style of our own day, even with our most severely classical style. Our methods would certainly be called revolutionary.
“It was usual not so very long since to display upon the bosom a fair red heart, stitched to the fencing jacket, to show plainly for all eyes to see the spot where hits should be placed. Attacks, parries and ripostes were restricted by convention to a very narrow circle. Any hit that went wide of the mark was accounted execrable and received with the most profound contempt. Modern fencing is inclined to be somewhat less fastidious. Hits in the low line are generally acknowledged. But a hit below the belt! ‘You really do not expect me to follow your point down there!’ is still the attitude of most fencers. ‘Call it a hit if you like, but really it is not fencing. A school of arms, you know, is not a school of surgery, you might leave those base regions to the medical students.’
“You smile, but I assure you that they mean it seriously, without the least sarcasm. It is quite true that any wound in that despised region would be mortal almost to a certainty. That is a detail; and they forget that a sword, though it may be a civil and gentlemanly implement, is still a lethal weapon. It really is very strange to admit that it is wrong to disregard the deadly character of the point when aimed in one direction, but to claim that it is right to disregard it when aimed in another. Yet most men cling to this error with the utmost pertinacity.
“That you should despise a hit in the leg or fore-arm I can well understand. By all means concentrate your whole attention on the protection of the parts of the body which contain the vital organs. But not to use your utmost care, your surest parries, your most anxious precautions to defend the trunk,—high lines and low,—always has been and is still a delusion, a delusion which those who attempt to draw an impossible distinction between the assaults of foil-play and real fighting with sharp swords, vainly ask us to accept as an unassailable article of faith.
“There is a real distinction, for after all foil-play can only be an imperfect representation of real fighting. Our object should be to make the resemblance as perfect as possible, and so minimise the chances on which the ignorant and brutal too confidently rely.
“Let them see that you both know the correct answer to a correct combination, and that you are equally prepared to deal with the wild and disorderly antics of an untutored point.