MR CHARLES READE ON THE ART OF WAR.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3198, 20 May 1879, Page 4

MR CHARLES READE ON THE ART OF WAR.

ThKfqllowing. letter is published in the Daily Telegraph x—" Sir,-~lt is not necessary to be... outwitted by Zulus. People that go to war should immediately rub up their, wita.; If they have to encounter savages superior in numbers and knowledge of the ground, and armed no longer with stone arrows and bone spears, but guns and rifles, the very first question they should ask themselves is this—Does all our superior science furnish us with no efigipe of war to turn the scale :> Now we do J possess an engine of modern warfare that ought to", have been in the unlucky camp, since no German nor French army would have invaded even a strange and wooded country without it—l mean a balloon—a la corde. A very small one would iix&ve: raised a man 1000 feet, and shown him in. a moment the shallow secrets of Zulu strategy. Lateral ambuscadei 1 thoagh- in the jungle are no ambuscades'to a scout looking down vertically with j a powerful binocular and sweeping thirty" miles vat a glance. The nation, therefore, will'feel obliged to the War Office if it will ( send out, not a great many more soldiers to be knocked on the head, but a few more soldiers, more ammunition,. r^more .balloons, more gasometers more, binoculars—more brains. Paris for her amusement, raised twenty-five people in a balloon 2400 feet several times daily. Cannot England raise one drummer boy or one gallant .little officer—' ingentes animos avgu'stoyeetore versans'—l2QQ feet, to protect her ■'■ chivalry from silly slaughter P No doubt it is much harder to generate gas in a camp than in a city, but it has been done in; camps, and therefore it can bo done again, and ought to be done, though a jury of inventors ■would have to be convoked. When civilised nations meet in battle, glory may be gained ithougb, life is lost; but those who send our heroes to fight with savages, should attack defensively and cudgel their brains,a bit, grudging so base an enemy the life of-a single British soldier, and the tears of those who mourn him.—l am, &c, Chas. Reade.