THE WAR.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 269, 13 November 1877, Page 4

THE WAR.

The London correspondent of the Auckland Star writes : —

When I begin to touch upon the war I really don't know how to begin, but perhaps the most honest course wilt be to admit at the outset that I have made a wrong estimate of tbe Russians. Not of their bravery, pluck, and indomitable perseverance 1 Nothing could exdeed that. I mean that I certainly had expected (and probably I wrote to you) that by this time they wou'ul have invested Constantinople* I believe even now that the Turks expected it too. But ifc ia now evident that on neither aide is there a decent general. Bravery, dash, and everything to make a slap-up soldier, we have in abundance, but no tactician. I can imagine the Czar crying in despair— "My kingdom for a jMoltke!" Here are these gallant fellows dying and being cut to pieces by thousands, and all for nothing. At this juncture England is thrilled with excitement, und the rash for the daiiy papers is extraordinary. The Daily News is the favorite; for now, as in the Franco-German war, they have by far the most graphic as well as the most reliable accounts. Mr Forbes is a marvellous man. His coolness and intrepedity are extraordinary. He pens his telegraphic despatches amid showers of bullets, and rides through the thickest of the fighting without a flinch. He has been decorated by tbe Czar, who has been lost in admiration at hia courage. Not that other correspondents have been behindhand, but Forbes stand out in relief, with a background of sulphureous smoke as a phenomenon in the journalism of the day. Napier's "Peninsular War" was penned in the retirement of a quiet study, but Napier's descriptions are tame in comparißoa with the words of Forbes, scribbled in a rough notebook, on tbe back of a horse, amid the screaming of sbeils, the thunder of artillery, and the groans of the dying. And, good God ! how these Turks and Russians fight 1 We used to soy (or Napoleon did) that a Britou never

knew when he was beaten, but we must pale our diminished fires before the ferocious conflicts of these eastern oorahatants. The struggle around Plevna has boen not only the most! bloody, but the most extraordinary inj point of tenacity and bull-dog cour-j age of any fighting on record. Iti would seem as if the spectacle of rotting) corpses, and the smell of blood, only I egged on the combatants to sterner and! wilder conflict. It Js, simply horrible;; and as far as sympathies go, whatever j one's side, one cannot refrain from' giving equal an meed of glory to both! sides, when he sees the utter forgetful- i neas of everything but the awful duties' of the hour, or the moment, on the part ,• of both Russian and Moslem. I spoke ! yesterday with a German who had juafc j returned from Moscow, and be tells me \ that in Bussia there is a terrible con* j dition of distress. Thousands of families are rendered fatherless and son- < less. The oountry is as if a vast '■• funeral pall bad been oast over it. And cf course Turkey can be no better, for both before Plevna, and at the Shipka , Pass, her losses have been enormous. \ What will be the end, or rather, when will be the end, who can foresee? No ' one seems to have any doubt that Russia must be victorious, and history seems to point to tbe fact that the Cross of late years has even borne down the Cresoent. That the days of the " Man of Sin" are numbered can hardly be doubtful, and that it is brewing up for a grand consummation of events is not to be denied. Ido not olaim to be a prophet, but as a clever writer has said, I read my Bible and fche Times, and draw my inferences.