BRITAIN'S "LITTLE WARS." Uplifting the Dervish.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 186, 23 January 1904, Page 6

BRITAIN'S "LITTLE WARS." Uplifting the Dervish.

" fI^HE Dervishes lost courage." X Silly fellows ' Cowards, in fact, to take any notice of two mountain guns and ten Maxims. Imagine "breaking and fleeing ' just because the British wanted to civilise them. The British heart swells with pride when its owner notices that an "unbreakable square" accounted for a thousand Dervishes, and made Somahland a warm corner Few people know what the Mullah's followers have done that their craven carcases should be filled with hollow bullets from machine guns. Britain is fighting them, and it is enough. The Dervishes fly. The cowards ' * * * There are some glorious victories gained by civilised troops m open country, against comparatively unarmed savages Anybody with Maxims could do the same sort of thing. It isn't cruel. It isn't iniquitous It is merely civilising the dark denizens of the earth, and taking them under the protecting wing of Britain. It requires stern purpose to sit on the trail of a Maxim and depress a trigger at a big target of fanatical coloured people The Dervishes have no courage They don't wait, like the gentlemen in the Jameson Raid, behind rocks until the cartridges are expended on nothingness. A thousand of them get Maximed, and the rest run away. The cowards ' * * # Britain cannot help Maximmg dark races. If she didn't, the dark races would swarm over her soldiers like sugar ants. Britain can help, however, talking about glorious victories when she has the enormous advantage of modern armament, and a foe who simply rushes into view as a target. Imagine the Mullah's Dervishes ever believing what we ourselves believe, that Britain's "missions " are for the uplifting of everybody who survives the Maxims. Somebody gets a V.C. for an act of desperate courage, forced on him by the exigencies of the situation. * * *■ The Dervisn who rushes on a Maxim is as desperately courageous as the officer who rescues a comrade under fire. If it is necessary to talk of Britain's "little wars" at all, we should talk about them with chastened regret that they are necessary. The Dervishes may be the biggest villains unhung, but perhaps each of the pile of 1000 Maximed fanatics is something to somebody not m the fight The world is horror stricken at a fire catastrophe that kills 600 white people. It smiles when it reads that Britishers "accounted for" 1000 howling fanatics.