THE ZULU DISASTER.

Kumara Times, Issue 798, 22 April 1879, Page 4

THE ZULU DISASTER.

[continental opinion.] In spite of the engrossing interets of their own home affairs, the terrible news from the Cape has created much sensation among the French public, a sensation all the deeper that they are no strangers to the feelings such disasters must awaken in the natidnal mind. We cannot say that there' is any great display of sympathy with our misfortune, and some military critics have laid the blame of this unfortunate occurrence on our military system, which tends to trust overmuch to the employment of native auxiliaries, and thus is apt to leave a mere handful of our highly-trained and highly-efficient regulars to cope with such an overwhelming number of barbarians that their destruction is always possible. The very eminent military judge, whose admiration for our troops is founded on the actual experience of real warfare, remarked that what has happened in South Africa would in all probability have happened in Turkey had we gone to war with Russia last spring. We .should, he thinks, have sent some 40.000 men to attack 200,000 Russians, just "as we sent 15,000 men to attack 6b;000 Zuluk. The breaking up of our force in small columns was also, he thinks, a great mistake. He added, “ England capnot afford not to be a great military Power, and this disaster in South Africa, painfully distressing as it must be to all Englishmen, will have been useful if it opens the eyes of Englishmen to the imperative necessity of bringing up their military system to the requirement of modern warfare. Imagine what it might have: been if such a disaster had occurred pot in Africa, but in Afghanistan, or even nearer .home, if instead of a column of 500’men, 1 a corps of 50,000 men had been annihilated. By what machinery could their places have been filled up. The French evening papers have not much to say on our defeat; but what they do say people in England will read with interest. The Patrie can hardly make up its mind to believe the news is true, and speaks of it in the conditional mood :—“ There is talk of a defeat sustained by the English in the: Zulu war. The absence of details hardly permits us to form an opinion as to the correctness of the news. We would fain- hope that there is some exaggeration in the terms of the dispatch, or that it must refer to one of those ambuscades to which the best and most ably commanded troops are sometimes exposed in savage warfare waged in a barbarous country.” The Temps is coldly critical after its fashion: —“Fortune, which has so constantly smiled upon the arms of England in the Afghan campaign, does not appear to favour them to the same extent In Southern Africa. The dihut of the campaign against the King of the Zulus has been marked by a severe check. A column of between eleven and twelve hundred men, one-half being Europeans, has been, so to speak, annihilated. The victorous Zulus are said to be seriously thieatening the Colony of Natal, and the Governor of the Cape is reported to be under the necessity of demanding fresh reinforcements. At first sight, and bearing in mind that the forces under Lord Chelmsford’s command amount to nearly 15.000 men, it does not seem as though the destruction of a single column should entail such grave consequences ; but it must not be forgotten that those forces are scattered over an immense extent of territory. . The two English Provinces of Transvaal and Natal, which border the country of the Zulus, occupy an area equal to two-thirds that of France—--350.000 square kilometres—inhabited by less* than 700,000 people, out of which barely 60,000 are of European race. From thaT number, small though it be, it is requisit to deduct the Boers who inhabit the Transvaal, and whose devotedness and co-operation are open to question. The Theatre of hostilities is upwards of one thousand kilometres (six hundred and twenty-five miles) from Cape Town, and the Parliament of this autonomous colony', which has no regular organised force available, shows no disposition to take its share of the expenses of a war undertaken for ‘ Imperial’ objects. That is the reason why without exaggerating the importance of the fighting on the banks of the Tugela, it;is only right to point out that°the incident comes just in time to confirm the remark made the other day by Lord Hartington, that it was hard to calculate what this war would cost the English Treasury. We shall not dwell on the enormous loss the English dispatch alleged to>have been‘inflicted on the Zulus'; if the figures are correct it is a revival of the classic victories of Pyrrhus, and after a few such victories the army of King Cetewayo, estimated at 40,000 men (oi whom only about a quarter are supplied with firearms), would be speedily annihilated.” •