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aron Von Lodge was the head of a small country known as Lilliland near Switzerland. The time was the early 1900s.

As the head of a country, the Baron had certain duties to be diplomatic when having guests visit Lilliland. The guests should be knowledgeable and respectful of the rules and regulations of the country they visit. If they are diplomats, they cannot always rely on diplomatic immunity in all of their behavior.

The Baron knows that almost all visitors are aware that Lilliland, like Switzerland, is a neutral country regarding war. Lilliland also does not permit hunting or killing any animals in the mountains or anywhere else in the country. Also, no guns are allowed for target practice at cardboard signs or clay pigeons tossed up in the air. No guns, no hunting, and no killing. That certainly seemed clear enough.

Yet, several times a year when diplomats came to visit Lilliland, they thought they are exempt from those rules because of their diplomatic status. The Baron was very emphatic on this point with no exceptions.

Some diplomats had learned that the animals in the Alpine Mountains were plentiful and if they went far enough up the mountains, no one could see or care what they did. What they failed to realize was that there were mountain rangers everywhere in case any hiker or skier needed help. Guns have a very loud echo in the mountains that could be heard for miles. There was virtually no area in Lilliland that could not hear a gun was fired.

There were a few times that visiting diplomats tried to do some hunting, but when word got back to the Baron, the guests’ bags were packed and waiting at the door. They were ushered out of Lilliland before the echo of the gun shots was silent.

The Baron simply could not understand how anyone could refer to shooting as a sport. There was no sportsmanship to killing a deer or bird whose only interest was to find food to feed its family.

Sportsmanship was when an equal number of men in opposing colorful uniforms competed with a ball on a defined flat surface on both sides of the court or field to see who could win. No one was shot, and no one stood in a field in disguise to look for a bird or animal that may wander by. Where there is sportsmanship, there is no killing.

The people of Lilliland supported the Baron on this policy.