Sport
relations. Our virtues lack the flourish and the charm of the lists: our evils are not mitigated by well-meant and delightful hypocrisies. Murder (except in self-defense) is murder, whether committed in a duel, with all its gentlemanly rules, or in unrestrained rage. When we are set face to face with an opponent, and one must kill the other, we proceed in the most effective way: we cannot understand the idea that rules of conduct govern murder. We cannot understand a man who, attacking another, insists that the other, in self-defense, shall strike only above the belt. That strange character, the gentleman thief, the gallant and appealing desperado, who recurs with such significant frequency in your fine and popular literature, perhaps points my meaning best. The idea of a "gentleman thief" is utterly impossible to the Jew: it is only you gentiles, with your idealization of the sporting qualities, who can thus unite in a universally popular hero, immorality and Rittersittlichkeit. It is probable, of course, that the majority of your
47
