AN ENGLISH CRITICISM OF THE WAR.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5118, 18 August 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

AN ENGLISH CRITICISM OF THE WAR.

» (Froni Blackwood's Magazine.) The last war with which Europe was afflicted caused the nerves of every one who heard of it to tingle at the tremendous powers then brought into operation, the huge and well appointed armies, the perfect weapons, the impressment of science and art into the service of war, the organisation, the rapid locomotion, the immense resources, the astounding results achieved in a few months ! It was then half a century or so since the wars of the First Napoleon over the same ground, and men were astounded at the perfection (may we use the word ?) to which the art of destruction had attained in that interval. " Away with old maxims,'' they said ; "we are living now under a new dispensation when wars, if bloody, must necessarily be short, from absolute want of wherewithal to feed long upoD." We were inclined to fix two or three months as" the extreme of the future duration of wars. We laid down the rule that the nation that was not prepared for war before war began would have little chance of preparing afterward, for it could have but a week or two of national life left. War, in its force and rapidity, in its startling events following one upon another like elaps of thunder, was to suggest continually that we live in days of electricity and steam. Fate seems never to tire of stultifying the calculations of the wise. Here is Europe, five years older in invention than she then was, now looking on at a war, waged between two of its nations, both semi-barbar-ous, both "heinously unprovided" with the ■ sinews of war, and both likely to be convicted of considerable unpreparedness before they have proceeded very far.with their contr-<!'. We must not omit to note, moreover, that, whereas in the Franco-Prussian war the struggle ™ openly enough made for a material prize, the semi-barbarians are fighting, one in the name of Christianity, and the other for existence. We have to make a retreat from our grand ideas and brilliant epithets about war, and to condescend Once more to acknowledge delays and difficulties, to recognise the old-fashioned powers of nature, to tolerate, even while war is raging, uneventful days, perhaps weeks. It is as if (parvis componere magna) we were compelled for a while to do without railways, and to return to the coaches and waggons of our fathers. The war drags its slow length along, and can in no wise keep pace with expectations. Nay, so dense is the darkness to which we have returned, that, with one belligerent army at least, we are not allowed to have the luxury of special correspondents. Marches are to be undertaken, towns to be stormed, ships to be sunk, battles to be fouglit, without the approval of, or even consultation with, the accomplished representatives of the Press. If this is not a return to the reign of Chaos and old Night, how otherwise shall we characterise it? Do we not remember the chivalrous deeds, the hairbreadth escapes, the wonderful adventures of those devoted quill-bearers, more thrilling than any chances that ever befell poor soldiers ? Do we not still sigh over their delightful familiarity with Emperors and Kings, the saturation of their style with military terms, the double-shotted thunder with which they rejoiced to split the ears of the groundlings ! And are these to cease ? Bah ! then, let us talk no more of progress.