Titles in the ring mean very little, but in Wilde’s case “Flyweight Champion of the World” is not to be despised. His contest with Alf Mansfield in May, 1919, at the Holborn Stadium, is worth a word, as showing the sort of task that this midget has repeatedly undertaken for the last ten or twelve years. Mansfield weighed 8 stone 4 lb., and stood half a head taller--sturdy, strong, a good boxer. In the second round Wilde went for him like a little fiend, and knocked him down for nine seconds. On rising, Mansfield could only hug his man to avoid the punishment which Wilde seemed literally to pour upon him. Mr. Corri, the referee, stopped the holding, and Mansfield, somewhat recovered, stood up and boxed pluckily. But the midget’s pace was amazing. He hit and hit again, one hand following the other at such a rate that the eye could scarcely follow, while it was quite impossible to count his blows. Mansfield was bewildered but brave, a good boxer and fast by ordinary standards, but dead slow with Wilde. And yet his hitting _as_ hitting was worth more if only he could plant the blows. In the third round he put in a right which astonished his man and hurt him: and Wilde was much more careful after that. But it was Wilde who wore him out by oft-repeated blows, so that in the eleventh round he was unsteady on his feet, in the twelfth fell from sheer weakness, whilst in the thirteenth, after two severe rights, each of which knocked him down, Mr. Corri very properly decided that he had been hurt enough. CHAPTER XIV AN AFTERTHOUGHT The Prize-Ring served its turn and passed; and modern boxing, roughly, fills the gap. At present we do not see why modern boxing should not go on indefinitely. For all that people say human nature has changed, does change, will persist in changing, and--we dare hope--for the better. By modern standards the Prize-Ring was brutal, just as the execution of young lads for sheep-stealing was brutal. The same issue of the _Times_ in June, 1833, which reported the acquittal at the Hertford Assizes of Deaf Burke for the manslaughter of Simon Byrne (See Chapter XIV, Part I.), informed its readers that a man found guilty of stealing spoons to the value of 27s. had been sentenced to transportation for life. Human nature has rebelled against the greater brutality as it did against the less. And war is the ultimate expression of brutality in man, and as we have seen only too lately, a brutality which carried to its logical conclusion (or very nearly) surpasses anything in that sort that mankind has been guilty of throughout the ages. A case, you say, against the truth or hope or possibility of change in human nature? Not quite; for human consciousness did, even before the German war, begin to realise what war would mean, and since then has made, is making, genuine efforts to withstand the tide of what pessimists regard as an inevitable tendency.