South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1882.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2772, 10 February 1882, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1882.

The boast of Christmastide so lately past regarding the advent of peace.on earth and good will among men appears to have been a vain one, for from many directions come intelligence of wars and rumors of wars. It is a curious thing, a shocking thing, that communities of men are more quarrelsome than the component individuals. Those who are at the head of affairs among nations and sections of nations, as individuals would be intensely disgusted if they were personally charged with being disorderly inclined, yet when they assemble in council they seem to cast aside their individual civilization and decent behavior and declare war upon those with whom they have some difference with as much savageness, and on as little prpvocation, as any pot-vahant loafer “ goes for ” another who has irritated him. Personal combats are, with rare exceptions, considered, brutal, and to engage in one derogatory to any man with a pretence to- respectability. National combats, on the contrary, no matter what the cause* may be—great of small, right or wrong—are always respectable, and genera illy more or less glorious. We admit that there are cases where personal c ombats may be held to some extent excusable, at any rate on one side, and! the same must be admitted in respectio national wars ; bat we do not believe that the proportion in the latter case is greater than in the former. It is abont time that nations, who as nations consider themselves respectable, looked upon war with the same detestation that respectable individuals look upon personal encounters. Bat it would be vain to hope for such, a feeling' about war just yet. There is too much sympathy felt for victorious armies, and “ gallant deeds ” in the field, and too little account taken -of the fearful cost of victories, and of the reverse of those gallant deeds.. Any observant person among the a udiencest who lately witnessed the ex.hibition of the diorama of the Zulu wa r in Timaru, if his attention had been in any degree directed to the matter, could not have failed to observe the marked manifestations of feeling which were unconsciously given by large numbers of each audience when the 'descriptive lento, rer, with expression ajppropriate to his intention to produce su ch effects, gave an account of brave deeds performed in the face of the enemy. War dioramas with descriptive lectures accompanying them are not now uncommion, and pictorial representations of other kinds with glowin;g descriptions in print, are still more common, but they nearly all (so nearly all that the qualification might be ‘Omitted) suffer from the defect of feeing partial and oue-sid’ed

representations of the ' facts. They give only the brighter side ;. the | ghastly, the horrid, the abominablet) side is kept ont of view, to be represented by figures, only'—the numbers of killed and wounded—which do not appear to the imagination, and do not influence the opinion that is formed of war at all. A very different lecture might have' been given in connection with the Zulu war diorama than that which was given by Mr Thompson. The destruction of the British troops at Isandula—was there nothing to be enlarged upon in this but the bravery of the men who fought to the last? Was not the gallantry of the fight more than equalled by the sickening horror of the butchery? The brave defence of Eorke’s Drift is certainly something for Britishers to be proud, of, seeing that the defence was made ; 1 but is no such minute account to be taken of the horrible things that happened at the other end of the defenders’rifles ? A whole town feels a pang of pain at the accidental mangling of one its citizens; a whole nation, nay the whole civilizedE world, is shocked to hear of the mortal wounding of a nation’s ruler; yet hundreds, thousands, are mangled and slain on battle-fields and no such feeling is excited. This is very inconsistent. If the life of individuals and the soundness of'their skins are so valuable when considered singly, it is curious that the estimate is varied so much when, numbers are concerned. There is nothing of the commercial “ reduction on : taking a quantity ” about it, because the value entirely disappears. . The sacredness of human life is held to be a fundamental fact, but only within narrow limits, and manslaughter on a large scale ceases to be criminal. This is certainly not, as it should be. If life is sacred in detail it must be so in the mass, and the person or persons who bring about a needless, and avertible war must be as guilty in the eye of Heaven as the man who shoots a President.