Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 1, 3 January 1901, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

In some nations as in some individuals the point of combustion is very low. A slight scratch, and they flare up like a phosphorus match, or (to use ' Mr. Dooley's ' phrase) ' like wan iv thim round stoves in a woodman's shanty whin rosiny wood is thrun in.' A good deal of needless heat and flare was thrown out by British Ministerialist organs and by their echoes in these colonies over the reception accorded to Mr. Kruger in France and Holland. But one staunch Government newspaper, the Spectator, keeps an ice-bag in its office. And this is how it discoursed on the matter : ' Why in the world should the British people worry themselves over Continental receptions to Mr. Kruger ? Every people sets up foreign heroes for itself, the English more especially claiming that liberty. They were wild with enthusiasm for Kossuth when official and popular Austria both thought him a demon ; and were ready to set up a statue to Jeff. Davis, who Mr. Gladstone thought had " made a nation," at a time when northern Americans considered he ought to be hanged. Nothing will be done for Kruger anywhere which will compare with the wild welcome given by London to Garibaldi, who was regarded by all Catholics as a sort of anti-Christ, by all Continental Conservatives as a dangerous revolutionary, and by all sovereigns except his own as a " successful brigand." '

SOMETHING * IN A NAME.

There is something in a name, after all. Mr. Lovehght, for instance, had no objection to being ' blooded ' by the old-time apothecary, but he was resolved to die rather than be phlebotomised. A pleasant American lady writer who lately toured through Ireland has discovered a fund of meaning in the warlike names that adorn her travelling map of the Green Isle. ' This,' says she, 'is the most pugnacious map I ever gazed upon. All the names seem to begin or end with ''kill," "bally," "whack," or "knock"; no wonder the Irish make good soldiers ! ' * * * We wonder what national characteristic, if any, the traveller of the future will discover in such Australian names as the following : Bombola, Mullengudgery, Murriwillumba, Wooloomooloo, Jamberoo, Murrumbidgee, Muloowurtie, Wolloway, Murrurundi, Teawamut, Kongorong, Konongowootong, Goomaroo, Moorooroo, Woolgoolga, Yankalilla, Pirron Yallok, Mundoora, Taroom, Goondiwirdi, Woolundunga? Mark Twain built 66 such names into a ' pome ' in his More Tramps Abroad. ' They are good words for poetry,' he says ; • among the best I have ever seen.' ' The best word in that list,' he adds, ' and the most musical and gurgly, is Wooloomooloo. It is a place near Sydney, and is a favorite pleasure resort. It has eight O's in it.' But Mark left to the globe trotter of the future the task of finding the key to some national characteristic in his collection of fearful and wonderful Australian names.

DYING OUT.

' While the houses of worship of our separated brethren in Northern New England,' says the Boston Pilot, ' are so poorly attended that it has become a matter of painful discussion

IT KEPT COOL.

among the more earnest of them, the Catholic churches can hardly be built fast enough to meet the needs of a fast increasing people. The Irish-American and the French-Canadian bid fair to possess the land in Northern New Hampshire. Recent statistics show that the population of the neighbor State, Vermont, within the past decade has increased but a little over three per cent. ; and, on a study of the towns in which the increase is most apparent, it is found that they are those in which the Catholics are most numerous. Fidelity to the laws of the Church means fidelity to the laws of nature; and that which fits a man for eternal life gives him as a rule happiness and prosperity in the life that now is.' Some months ago, in connection with the latest returns of the New Zealand birth-rate, we read a somewhat similar homily to that contained in the closing sentence which we have quoted from our valued Boston contemporary. New Zealand has already set its foot on the downward path which has led to the practical extinction of the once hardy but now effete stock that populated Puritan New England.

NO GRAVE CRIME THERE.

'The journal of the Royal Statistical Society of England may not be a very exhilarating publication, but its statements are never open to dispute.' So says the Edinburgh Catholic Herald of November 9. 'It has, 1 continues our esteemed Scottish contemporary, ' made the discovery that Ireland is " erroneously thought to be a specially criminal country." Really, it finds Ireland is free from grave crime. Both England and Scotland show " an enormously greater proportion of prisoners." Further, it declares that " convicts, both male and female, show an extraordinary decrease in Ireland, and one is forced to believe that instead of the Irish being a naturally lawless, offensive people, as so many think, they are in truth naturally well behaved and law-abiding beyond most people. Whether this is due to their deep religious instincts or to other causes, it is not for me to decide." ' * ♦ » ' During the past twenty years,' continues the Herald, ' it is added, juvenile crime has diminished thirty-nine per cent. This statement supplies the key to the whole. Elsewhere, especially in Britain, France, and America, juvenile crime is on the increase : in France alarmingly so. In France the schools have been laicised. Religion has been driven out. In Ireland religious teaching has increased, and is increasing. The deduction is obvious.'

' BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION.'

The ' benevolent assimilation ' of the Philippines proceeds apace. But, somehow, the Filipinos are not convinced to any great extent of the benefits of the imported article which bears the label, ' American civilisation.' Here is a specimen of this canned ' civilisation ' : it is described by a bould sojer boy at the front in the course of a letter to his parents in Indiana :—: — About the same time we came here last October there were brought here from China about 800 of the lowest type of Chinese women, and they are installed in houses, some for officers and come for private soldiers. Each inmate payo a tax of -idol, per week to the military authorities, which includes a license to sell wines and beer. The worst of it is these houses are all decorated inside and out with the Stars and Stripes, and at night the streets are a mass

of howling, drunken, half-naked women and American soldiers. I have wondered what some of the Christian Republicans at home would think of the way the great Christianising, liberty-loving, High-toned America is educating the wild and unfit for self-fi-overnment Filipinos. And I see that the Republican papers Bay the flag must not come down ; but I think if some of the old brethren and sisters could look over here some night and see Major McKmley's haochie-hoochie in full blast under Old Glory, they would not only say the fla? must come down, but would tear it down, The special commissionersent to the Philippines by the New Voice, a Chicago paper, also reports a state of shocking moral degradation existing by license in Manila under the supervision °LAL A mencan offi cers and the protection of the American flag. ' Ihe natives,' he adds, • not only hate us for filling their streets with orgies they never sa* before, but are confirmed in their determination never to submit to our rule.' And more power to their elbows !

WAR AND INSANITY.

When the war correspondent condescends to refer to the loss of life in the armed struggles of nations, he usually limits his remarks to the death which ' rides upon the sulphury Siroc. He is not often so 'odiously statistical' as to detail the vast numbers of hapless fighters whose bodies and souls are wrenched apart by disease. And scarcely ever a hint is given of the smaller, but appreciable percentage of those whose overstrung minds give way under the strain of forced marching, scanty fare, exposure, and fighting, leaving their damaged wits ' like sweet bells jangled, out of tune, and harsh.' As far back as 1856 the French statist Lunier discovered that people in his time went mad at the following rates per million ; peasants, 52; tradesmen, 180; capitalists, 275; members of the learned professions, 525 ; soldiers, 590 ; and officers at the rate of 1300. Quite recently another French statist published figures which go to show that military men more than maintain their old pre-eminence for rapid wear and tear of the contents of their brain-boxes. According to this latest authority on the subject, there are 199 'confirmed lunatics' to every 100,000 men in the military and naval professions. These figures refer, however, only to the piping times of peace. War under any circumstances adds considerably to the number of military candidates for Bedlam. Under modern conditions it is— in Kiplings words—' 'ell and broken bottles' in comparison with the days of the old Brown Bess and the Enfield. And it is far more specially calculated to addle the wits of the fightine man. 6 * • « * The noted Baptist preacher Robert Hall attributed his temporary lunacy to 'toomiuh brain, sir; too much brain. 1 The fighting man may not be overstocked with brain*. But fighting demands more of them now than ever before in history. St. Cyr, the great French in irshal, once declared that ' a brave army consists of one-third of soldiers actually brave, one- third of those who might be brave under special circumstances, and a remaining third consisting of cowards.' Soldiers stood a better chance of being brave and retaining their sober senses in the days when every infantryman felt the friendly and sustaining pressure of his neighbors' elbow on right and left, and cavalrymen rode upon the enemy knee to knee, and when weight of impact was of more account in the rank and file than weight or quality of brain. Campaigns are fought more nowadays with intellect and sole-leather. But the rush and hurry of modern life are not favorable to cool thinking amidst the swiftly changing pandemonium of a modern battlefield. Even in the comparatively tame times of the Austro-Prussian struggle of 1866 the great Prussian war-minister, von Roon, wrote from Nikelsburg : ' Increased work and the quantity and variety of impressions have so irritated my nerves that it seems as if fires were bursting cut in my brain.' Considerable numbers of men went stark mad during the Franco-German war. That remarkable little book. The Red Badge of Courage, gives a curious insight into the progress of passing insanity among even the best trcops during the American Civil War. Every troopship returning from Manila brings to San Francisco among its damaged cargo of invalided soldiers an appreciable percentage of men bereft of the use of reason. British officers have been invalided home from South Africa with minds unhinged. Among them was one prominent general. Of the spread of insanity among the rank and file no official records are as yet to hand. But all the available medical testimony goes to shew th;t the losses from insanity will continue to bulk appreciably in the butchei's bill of every campaign fought under modern conditions. • • • In his Modern Weapons and Modern War, Bloch says: ' With the increase of culture and prosperity nervousness has also increased, and in modern, especially in Western European, armies a considerable proportion of men will be founa unaccustomed to heavy physical labor and to forced marches. To this category the majority of minufacturing laborers will belong. Nervousness will be all the more noticeable since night attacks are strongly recommended by many military writers,

and undoubtedly these will be made more often than in past wars. Even the expectation of a battle by night will cause alarm and give birth to nervous excitement. This question of the influence of nervousness on losses in time of war has attracted the attention of several medical writers, and some have expressed the opinion that a considerable number of soldiers will be driven mad.'

THE TALL POPi'IES.

Death still shows a preference for lopping the tall poppies in war. Despite the adoption of khaki and the abandonment of nodding' plumes, gold lace, burnished buttons, and flashing weapons by British officers in the South African campaign, the proportion of them that met their deaths by wounds very nearly establishes a record in the history of later wars between civilised peoples. The death rate per thousand officers and men during the first twelve months of the war was as follows :—: —

Thus, the death -levy from wounds was over three and a half times greater among officers than among the men ; and the total mortality was almost exactly twice as great among the officers as among the rank and file, being 101*9 per thousand of the former as against 51*9 per thousand of the latter. • • • In the German army the officers had twice as many killed and three times as many wounded as the lower ranks. Among the men the death-rate varied from 17*6 per thousand among the engineers to 27*1 among the cavalry, 272 in the artillery, and 52 8 among the infantry. Staff officers suffered most severely. The mortality ran as high as 105 per thousand for the whole campaign. Captains came next with 87 deaths per thousand. The fighting in the South African campaign was for the rank and file almost as bloodless as a French duel compared with the fierce conflicts of the Franco-German War. And yet the mortality among German officers during the seven months of the war was only three per thousand greater than in the little campaign against the peasant soldiers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The total death-rate among German officers was 76 per thousand as against 73 per thousand in South Africa. • • * This constant drain of officers produces one of the problems with which military administration has not yet been able to successfully grapple. One immediate const quence of this is that troops in the field are insufficiently or inefficiently officered. And in this condition the courage often oozes away from even the best soldiers and they become limp and spiritless. An incident in point is related by Prince Hohenlohe in his Letters on Artillery. It occurred in a village near Paris, where Frank and Prussian had been carving each other up during a fierce sortie from the beleaguered city. ' After diiving the enemy from a village,' says the Prince, * its graveyard was occupied by half a company of one of our best regiments. Quite unexpectedly the enemy made a new attack, and gained possesion of the graveyard, which we were obliged to capture anew. On this being done, I asked the men of the half company how they could have given up the graveyard to the enemy. The soldiers answered naively : " But all our officers were killed. There was no one left to tell us what to do, so we went off." ' When skilled leaders, accustomed to the smell of hostile gunpowder, are decimated at the front, their places are frequently filled by amateur reserve officers, deficient in knowledge, discretion, and adaptability to conditions — like the pedantic General Braddock, who fought the Indians in the Ohio forests according to the 'old rules' and died wondering by what twist of magic the wild red man, who knew nothing about ' rules,' could have beaten him so completely at the game of war. Inexperienced and regulationbound officers were afforded ample scope for blundering in South Africa, as in the Crimea. And they took bountiful advantage of the opportunity. The result was a turmoil of confusion such as, in the French army of the early days of the war of 1870, found expression in the words : Ordre, contreordre, dSsordre.' • • • ' The losses from wounds,' says a recent authority on military science, 'constitute but a small part of the total number of sacrifices [caused by war]. In past wars they have been a fifth, the remaining four-fifths representing losses from sickness and exhaustion. Napoleon in the march to Moscow lost two-thirds of his army though he fought only one general engagement. The Russian armies operating against him, in the course of five months lost four-fifths of their strength. The losses of the Federal armies in the Civil War in two years (June, 1861 to June, 1863) amounted to 53*2 deaths in the thousand, of which only B*6 were caused by wounds, and 44*6 by sickness. The mortality from sickness among the officers amounted to 22 in the thousand, while among the men it rose to 46. In the Franco- Prussian war the losses of the Germans

were 347 per cent, from wounds- and only 30 per cent, from sickness. But this is explained by the shortness of the campaign, and by the fact that, being greatly superior in numbers, the Germans were able to send their sick home. On the French side these proportions were reversed.' ♦ • • The highest death-rate in the wars of the past half century occurred in the blundering campaign in the Crimea. Thp French, who did most of the fighting, lost 64 men per thousand from wounds, and 230 per thousand fiom biekness — in all a grand total of 95,615 men in the prime of life. On the British side the losses from wounds were 47 per thousand ; from disease, 179 per thousand. Great Britain sacrificed 22,180 lives. Only one man came out of that wretched campaign with a first-class military reputation. That ma.) was, by universal consent, General Todleben, the defender of Sebastopol. Other promising reputations were shattered by it. And one needs Sam Weller's double magnifying electroscopic spectacles of hextra power to discover the political results of all the powder-blazing and blood-letting that took place during that fatuous and bungling war.

-illed or died of wounds >ied of disease 0 Jffloers, 73 289 Hea, 205 314