WAR.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 290, 7 December 1877, Page 4

WAR.

[From Truth.]

War, according to the old Roman maxim, renders profane everything sacred belonging to an enemy. When the ancient conquerors of the world sold off into slavery the citizens of some town or province that they had vanquished, they felt that they were eminently humane, as they had acquired the right to slay their prisoners. One can easily imagine the indignant protests of those models of ancient chivalry the mailed knights — who, with comparative safety to themselves, rode down imperfectly armed foot soldiers, when the invention of gunpowder equalised the risk incurred by long descended kaights and baae-born serf. How angrily must, they nave announced the sacrilegious discovery! How they must have sighed for the good old days when they were able to cut and hue their fellow-men with impunity to their own carcases ! This spirit of making war an agreeable amusement rather than a serious business, still survives. Whenever its dangers are increased, there is a protest raised in the name of humanity. For our part we regard war, not only as an unmitigated curse, but as the most foolish manner in which the treasures of a nation and the lives of its citizens can be expended, and our only hope that Europe will not continue to be periodically deluged in blood, lies in the thought that wars will eventually become such butcheries that mankind will, in dread of their terrible results, hesitate to engage in them.

At the commencement of the Crimean war Professor Jacobi invented torpedoes. He was denounced as an enemy of the human race, and it was suggested tbat torpedoes should be excluded from the weapons of war permitted by the code of modern civilization. Common sense, however, prevailed, and torpedo boats are now a recognised portion of a fleet. Another intelligent gentleman invented explosive bullets. He was not however so fortunate as Professor Jacobi, for, by an international understanding* explosive bullets have been tabooed. Can anything be more absurd than this ? Why are wells not to be poisoned ? Why are defencelegs towns not to be bombarded p Why are provinces which are at the mercy of a foreign army not to be desolated ? Why are are all their inhabitants not to be driven off into slavery ? We ask these questions in the interests of peace, bo long as nations are practically to suffer nothing in case they are vanquished, and are to carry on wars by means of a class specially aftected to hostilities, but whose risks are limited by treaties, wars will be plentiful. To increase the horrors and the terrors of war, and to involve in them men, women, and children, would, we are convinced, be the surest means to farce nations to live in peace and amity with each other. We ourselves, who have a very slight knowledge of chemistry, would engage to deal with an army so effectively, that like the host of Sennacherib, it wouid awake dead men. The means to eflect this must be kuown to both Turkish and Bussian chemists as well as to ourselves. If the pomp and pride of glorious war were reduced to marching on %o a battle-field, and there, without deploying, charging, or manoeuvring, simply dying like wasps smoked out in a nest, is it probable that Turks and Russians would risk such a fate ?

Why should a soldier be legitimately run through the body with a bayonet, and the peaceful citizen who has hired that soldier to fight for him be let off Soot free? AH these distinctions are radically false. If the Turks had trained up a corps of secret ageote, skilled in the arts of poisoning, and had announced that, should war be declared against them by Russia, these agents would be distributed over the domioious of the Czir, with the mission to deal with bis Majesty, his Majesty's ministers, courtiers, dip'onatic agents, and generals, the Russians would have meditated so long before engoging in war, that peace would never, probably, have been broken. Between, as a measure of defence, introducing a bullet into the stomach of a Russian soldier, and introducing prussic acid into the stomach of Price CxortescuukcfF, we see no difference. The one 13 precisely as justifiable as the other; indeed, as Prince Gorischakoff ia far more responsible for the war than the soldier, it would be more just that he rather than the soldier, should be exposed to its risk?. We do not entertain a doubt, that both Lord BeaconsQeld and Sir Stafford Norihcote would cheerfully die ia defence of their country, wer« this necessary; but if these two Ministers knew, that the effect of England declaring war against aoy foreign natioD, would be, that, instead of their going comfortably dowa to the House of Commoua to impose a few additional taxes, it might be that they would (eel a gnawing pain iv their entrails, to be followed by speedy death, they would think twice, and even thrice, before invoiviog us in hostilities.

We ara convinced that, in reatrieting the operations of war, we aro iccroaeiuir the probabilities of its periodcaily breaking out. If it were rendered terrible to all, and more particularly to those who have tho destinies of nations in their hands, one Htep, at least, towards the Milleniucn would be taken. Similiu similibus curaniur. Strip " glorious war" of all its pomp and pride, bring home its danger to all the inhabitants of a cation that howls for it, to the ministers that advocate it, and to the moaarchs that declare it, aad an era of peace would soon succeed the era of

throat-cutting, bombarding, and scientific murder on a gigantic scale, in which our lot seems to have been cast.