A GOOD CORRESPONDENT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 134, 8 June 1871, Page 2

A GOOD CORRESPONDENT

i 0 {From Chambers' Journal.) If the Franco-German war be fated to be famous on no other account, it will ever be remarkable for the literary talent which has been evoked by it. Never has the newspaper correspondent apppeared in such favorable guise; so graphic, and at the same time so warlike, that we knownot whether it is Captain Sword or' Captain Pen who is addressing vs — for indeed he is those " two single gentlemen rolled into one." The city of Metz has been exceptionally fortunate in possessing for its historian, Mr. G. T. Robinson, : special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, who was shut up within, jits walls thronghout the seige. It would be invidious to say who was the best repre-^ sentatiye of the British, press, where. 90 many have acquitted themselves' so wellj but certainly there is none who • surpasses thjs gentleman in ( giying an air of vraisemblance to all he writes. Some writers

— and especially the brilliant ones — have the false art of describing truth as though it were fiction; and others have the weakness for describing events that never occurred. Before this very Metz, for example, it is notorious that the following circumstance took place. A and B were two English newspaper correspondents, each with his particular literary gift. A had great graphic power; but it was necessary for him to have seen what he described. He therefore roughed it with the poor soldiers; lay in the trenches, starved on the outposts ; and, on the whole, had a very hard life of it out there. B was, on the other hand, an imaginative genius; it was not necessary for him to see the things that he described, nor even to hear of them; he evoked them out of his own consciousness, like the famous German philosopher — the fellow-conutry-man of those brave soldiers among whom B did not live. He lived at a hotel, remote from the trenches, and mud, and nightwork, and composed his commentaries upon the siege of Metz in a first floor sitting-room. It was necessary, he said, for an historian to be, above all things, calm and comfortable. News grew rare, and action slack. The Germans sat down outside Metz, the French within ; they peered at one another over parapets, and potted each other's sentries (it was a wonder that in Metz they didn't eat potted sentry), but nothing more. The English public were getting eager for stirring details ; a week had passed without a sortie. At last there appeared a grand account of one in Bs paper ; it was a sally of the first class, and full of picturesque incidents. Bs paper sold like wildfire, for in this respect it possessed exclusive intelligence. No other paper had a word of the affair For remainder of news see fourth page.

Under these circumstances, the proprietors of A's journal -vjrrote over to him indignantly to know/wby he had not sent them an account off it. Worse than the dull lover who makes np sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow, is the correspondent who leaves a Sally un described. A mounted his digger, which had been in as many engagements as Wouverman's gray horse, and <rode a day's journey-^to Bs hotel. B jeceiyed him with effusion ; gave him beef instead of horseflesh, pate de foie grds in pl^ce of water-rats, and turned away his wijatb. "Only " said A at parting, "confine yourself in future to individual combats. I don't mind youi drawing upon youv imagination for litlle facts of that kind. But no more general sorties. My proprietors won't staif^ it." Now, whenever there was really a sortie at Metz, Mr. G-. T. Robinson went out in it ; to serve his newspaper and help the wounded. He had been used to that work before ; here is his experience of it after the battle of Borny. He is at the farm Bellecroix, the centre of the late French position. " Last night our troops held it ; it was they who loop-holed those walls. That blackened mark against the gable is caused by a spent shell from St. Barbe, which just had strength enough to reach but not to breach the wall. The sign which swings over the door is riddled with bullets, for this road-side farm, like most other road-side farms in France, was an inn also ; even the very finger-post in front is pierced through And through, and the little stone cross, atr the parting of the way there, is chipped vand pock-marked in a sacrilegious manner. That was once the Belle Croix which gave this place its name v The ashes of the French camp-fire at the crossing are yet alight, but there is no soldier near. It is very strange this absence, for this was to be the great day of victory. "Infuriated at being potted 'at, the guardians of this field ol' death will not let us go forward, so, ascending the rising land to our right, we work our way across the fields, and are spon on tlie crown of the hill, andxhere, 0 God! what a sickening sight awaits us. There, in front, is a clean even line pf dead Frenchmen, three deep, laid out with miltary regularity. Craning their necks to peer over that crest, the foe caught them; he had crept into that wood close by, and, as they raised their heads to aim, they were all dead men. Most of them have fallen forward on their faces, their arms extended, some with their fingers on the trigger they never had time to pull. Some few have reeled bacs wards, and then there is a smashed and battered face turned up to heaven. If the blood of Abel . cried to Heaven for vengeance, these men's blood appeals also, and that pattered image of their Maker is their offering priest. There is another there whose face is half shot away. Surely it must be faney — but no, it moves; and then it flashes upon our mind that there may . still be some living men yet here, and that therefore we have a duty to dp in which a neutral may engage, and we go up to him. 'Yes, poor fellow, this one still lives, though it might also seem to be the greater mercy to end that life of pain which, should he live, he will have to carry about with him. But, as he lives, something must be done. The question is, what ? Not a French soldier is near, not a French doctor, not one of that multitudinous and polyglot assemblage who sport their white brassards with so much complacency in Metz. There is no help for it but to go right up to the Prussians there, and ask in God's name their help for a wounded enemV. This is done ; and with true nooleheartedness a party of their own men and a cart are sent off with us for any wounded we may find^ Here and there we pick up andther'still (breathing soldier, and consign him to the kindly hands of those who, a few hours ago, were just as anxious to killthem as they are willing now to save. This is the scene of the hottest part of the fight, and the dead lie thickly round. The Prussian officer accompanies us, and, like ourselves, he almost weeps over the spectacle. He is a non -combatant officer — an offiber ;o( :the engineers — and though just where we stood ihe French dead lay heaped up high, he did not disguise the fact that there, further down in the valley, the* Prussian 1 dead this morning rose much higher. Once more I am on the road bordered by junipers— -their shadow falls heavier now; , the road is thickly strewn on both its sides with dead and dying men — almost all on this Bide of the valley French, and almost all on the: other side of the valley Prussians; for 'in these days of, i'long range, that melee in the fight and that mingling in the death which made' the chivalry of the wars of old, has passed away, and there is nothing left but dull animal slaughter. We still wander on, searching for the living amongst the-flead. Five miles of , dead and wounded men are there itt these valleys and up these hill*

sides. ..There lies a Chasseur de Vincennes. Surely he must be living, his color is so good — nor can he be deeply wounded. Why^ then, is he so still? HeariDg French voices near him, he looks up, pretending to awake out of sleep. For about ten hours he has lain therein mortal f un k — uo other word will do — and the wretched coward appeals to ns to deliver him from the hands of the Prussians." After Borny, Mr. Robinson tells us that the Germans could have marched right into Metz if they had only chanced to know that it was defenceless. As it was, they only rode round it, and looked into its formidable walls. Some Uhlans who had actually got as far as the railway station were scared away by a boy shooting sparrows. Fearing an ambuscade, they withdre-v in astonishment, and Metz was saved by. a want of that knowledge the Germans were supposed to possess so abundantly, and from which supposition so many innocent persons had to suffer the misery of actual arrest, and the daily dread of its occurrence. In short, it was Sebastopol over again ! Mr. Robinson, who saw much of what he writes about, has evidently no great faith in the military mind. If all is not Luck (as a great strategist once frankly declared was the case in war), it is certainly half the battle ; and, with the exception of the bit of good fortune for Metz, the luck was not on the French side— aud they wanted it very much. Tt is impossible to set forth the innumerable instances of tardiness, ignorance, want of accord, and general incompetency which Mr. Robiuson's book attributes to the French commauders. They were almost all fools except Bazaiue, who knew no more of strategy than the rest, but who had the j wits of a traitor ; for that Metz was betrayed it is impossible to doubt, if we believe our author. As for the science of the war, indeed — though it must be remembered he only saw the early days 0 f it — the Prussians themselves had only one idea of achieving success — namely, by force of numbers. Of tbe dreadful engagement of St. Privat, he writes : " Taking advantage of the two woods of Doseuillons and De la Cusse, the Prussians pushed forward enormous masses of men on to this point, at the same time making a strong demonstration from Ste Marie-aux-Chenes on the position of St Privat. On they poured them. Our batteries of mitrailleuses established on the heights mowed them down at twelve hundred to fourteen hundred yards' distance in long black rows. There was no science in their attack; it was simply brute force J^nd / stupidity**combined ; the more we k^Hled, the more there seemed to be to kill. After a time they knew it wo\ild be physically impossible for us to keerj on killing them ; both our men and our amrrmaition would be exhausted; so on thejjPept pouring fresh troops after fresb/ffoops in murderous wantonness,^™ crush by force of numbers seemeothe only idea. There was no attempt to outflank us, which might so easily have been done, as their line was longer than ours, and we could not advance, they holding the roads in check. We were simply beaten not by tactics, but because we could not butcher any more. At last our ammunition failed us, and then the generals lost their heads. Begiments were ordered into impossible places, overlapping each other in the clumsiest fashion, simply placed where they could be most conveniently killed, and then forgotten ; no supplies of ammunition were brougfrtVip, and Caurobert's corps was absolutely pushing back the enemy from his ' position on bur right, really bending him. back, when the last round his artillery had was fired. At the same tita*e the 67th stood for three hours right in'Yront of a' "woody being leisurely shot down by the Prussians, without a single cartouche to fire ;.not a single noncommissioned officer came away from that wood; and two-thirds 'of the regiment remained with them. An ambulance was pitched at a place appointed by Frossard, who, in half-an-hour afterwards, had so forgotten where it was, that he ordered some artillery immediately in front of it. Of course, the Prussian fire comes plunging into it to silence this, and over it into our ambulance to i silence many there. Bursting in the midst of the poor maimed, wounded, and amputated men, come the shells, and the hoprorsf of war are intensified to a pitch beyond the power of the most; devilish imagination to surpass. Good God! . this \is •; glorious — splendid , work, war! The profession of arms^is^ certainly 'the "nobjes't calling when it 'ir* conducted thu^s"tnere are poor men killed over and* over again, that is, they go^ through the horrors: of death many times !; and . what with their generals, andVhat with their ! -doctors, it is a wonder there are any left. Certainly glory is very beautiful whe,n, it is encountered in a shelled ambulance; and one is rather puzzled to define What is murder, or wha^ n'oj;.^.^ somebody blight to., ,s#, jj^riged for this, ! and then the tragedy would be completed.