Luring the Enemy

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 34, 25 August 1904, Page 29

Luring the Enemy

The following skit trom the ' New York Sun ' on the manner in which battles are fought and won by the newspaper expert will be of interest at the present time when both the Russian and Japanese commanders are the recipients of so much instruction in strategy from press men all the world over :—

' I see that some of the Russian editors are explaining that Kuiopat'km's plan is to lure the Japanese to Manchuna,' aa*d an old army officer. 'It reminds me of a country editor out West, whom I Knew* during the Fi aneo-Prussian war.

' The editor's sympathies were with the French. He wrote editorials by the yard, .showing how France was lining the Dutch, as he called them, to de&truction. ' His paper came out once a week, so that he had ample time to work out the French plans. He had a map in the window of his oflice, and the yeomanry from the country rounded up as they came in to hear the news.

' The editor stood without and indicated the strategic points on the map by pointing to them with a piece of fishing rod Wossenburg, 'Worth, Saarbruck, (rravelotte, and Sedan were plotted as the engagements took place from tune to time. You will remember that the French were defeated in every instance.

' Occasionally some hayseed would ask from his wagon-load how it was that the French were falling back, or how it was that they had been defeated. ' " That's where the French strategy comes in," the editor would explain. " They are too much for the Dutch You farmers are not en to this game of war."

" Then he would tell them to see the next issue of the paper, in which it would be further explained. He was a foxy editor after all. By this means he increased his circulation.

' His editorials explained how the further any army got from its base the nearer it got to defeat. There were some officers in the civil war who operated, or tried to operate, on the same hypothesis. I' think Gen. Shciman knocked that idea into a cocked ihat.

' When Ba7aine surrendered 176,000 men at Metz the editor explained that France could afford to give up that number in order to get the Dutch undar the walls of Paris.

' When the news of the end of the war came ihe editor explained in a brief paragraph— his editorials had been dwindling week after week— that if the French had done more hghting and less luring the result might have been different. In winding up this paragraph the editor said :

' " And hosides, it's none of our business, anyway."

' From that time on he confined his editorials to a discussion of the tariff until the sheriff closed up his eihop. If you ask me if history is liable to repeat itself I can only say that it has done so on several occa-