The Discipline of War.

Manawatu Standard, Volume X, Issue 55, 3 August 1885, Page 4

The Discipline of War.

{ This country has th»* satisfaction of knowing that if it is committed Co war, the reasou n ill be that war is m the jiiitnry of things unavoidable, an>l U undertaken for no less a nsi-on than tlie existence of the Bj'itish Empire. That war under any circumstances is a gre.it calamity is a: uuism. But it is only one of runny calamities from which t.hti -human race suffers, and its privations, miseries, deaths, mournings, and tears — the gap 3 which it creates m families and the seats it makes e"pip'.y at social gatherings are attributes shared l>y iL m common , with other visitations to which mortality is exposed. The destructiveagencies of nature — earthquake, famine, and pestilence — are at least as deadly as thehavqq.of battle. There exists at the present moment m the United Kingdom, as the evidence taken by the Royal Commission 'for the Housing of the Pooi would attest, an amount of suffering — iheconsequence of overcrowding m pestiferous alleysand comts, ot hunger, of scant clothing, of the most abominable vices — as grievous as can ever follow m the train of the canuon and-the sword. 'War, therefore, if it is fro;n one point of view an addition -to the ' sum of hiimaii/inisery m this best of ■'nil' possible worlds, is not m itself the worst kind of 'addition ' iinma;»inal>ie. -Again, even while we accept the current views of the" sanctity of human life, itmusb be remembered that the loss of life which war entails is, from the poinc of view of the persoual bereavement it creates and the personal "ifrief it causes, individual and not national. T^or instance, if only a scSre Of officers and ten seme of men were to perish m a great campaign, it w.ould L be prouounceJ praeticilly bloodless. Yet_ the agony and the ...disruption of households occassioned '.by. this comparative,!^ infinitesimal .'io.ss ;'wqul<l not, so far as those u;>ori whom it descended are coiieeuied, be less that if it were multij^iied a huudredfold. It is .a law of- -human natuie that the blows and bereavements which ring the heart should lie Jim iced to thoie whom they immediately affect. It is no real aggravation of sorrow to the wife, moth r, or daughter, whose husband, son, or lover is lying dead with a builet througji his " tear t, to know that thousands more of tlieir sex are bewailing a like affliction. To the imagination a decimated battalion seems, and is moie horrible than the death of half a dozen nrivales and a subaltern. But m each instance the mortality, looking at it as :i! factor m the suinof eaithly sorrow, is an 'affair for the individual rather t'hsin for the nation.- Fervently as English men and Englishwomen.; may repeat the prayerin the Litany forexeniption from the woes of battle, they musti-emem-ber that battle itself m, even m the Litany, =only classed with other incidents y .of; horror. ", And quite apart lro.tu': the conventional ami material advantages which compensate the awful; cljaracler of war, it cannot fail to leach a people and a people's statesman a'-u^eful lesson, if ii reminds the former powerfully of the. I m penal unity, without which the British Isles would- lie no habitabie place, and. the latter of the paramount duty they owe to those i whom i hey control to 'reckon quickly with their adversary while yet there is time. It' may be that mauy or most ;ot th ! e troubles and anxieties which now press u i>on us from every side were, from -the fir.st; inevitable, and have come upon us m virtue of a sort of prec<»ncei ; ted haiinony. But ; who shall say that there is no feature ih., ; the >itnalion embarrassing or threatening to day which might not have been smooth ed down or removed altogether, by fully and fair])- confronting it when it assumed oi initially a look of menace? If war should onlyemphasise lo the political chiefs di the Euglish" democracy a ' sense of ,res))onhibiliiy, •■!- n v canno^b-. be 'ah 'Unmixed evil.—^ e World.