Evening post SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1914.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 94, 17 October 1914, Page 6

Evening post SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1914.

THE RED CROSS IN MODERN WAR ♦ A correspondent of The Times has described the Germans as waging war in the spirit of Attila, but with the immense advantage of the added powers of destruction conferred by modern science. When one contrasts the spear of the primitive warrior with the machine gun of to-day, which in the hands of a single man could in a few minutes mow down a whole regiment, or the ancient batter-ing-ram with those terrible siege guns of the Germane which have recently been turned on Liege and Antwerp, one realises how immense has been the advance in the arts of destruction, and is disposed to doubt whether twenty centuries of Christian civilisation have any prouder triumphs to show than this diabolical proficiency in the business of killing. Appalling as is the commentary which these facts present upon the inwardness of our much-vaunted Christianity, there is some comfort in the reflection that they are far from exhausting the influence of science upon tho effects of war. Busy as science has been in tn« devising of engines and mifisilcs for the destruction of life and property, it has, ; with its cold impartiality, been equally active in the improvement of tho antidotes. To some extent the very dcadliness of its devices has paradoxically provided their own antidote. Mortality has not increased proportionately to tho dcstructivenees of the weapons employed ; it has, on the contrary, declined. Though one must not build too confidently upon the statistics of ancient battles, tho com-monly-accepted estimates credit (Jannsn with a mortality unexampled in tho great battles of modern times. Gravelotte was the fiercest engagement in the Franco-Prussian War, and tho combination of needle-guns and chassopoUj and quick-firers, with a series of frontal attacks directed against strongly-defended positions, seemed well calculated to produce a terrible mortality. Yet the casualties at Gravelotte only amounted to 15

at Cannae a fight to a finish in the good, straightforward, old-fashioned way, produced casualties variously estimated at from 34 to nearly 50 per cent, of the combatants. The explanation of the paradox is that the moral element being, as Napoleon said, the main thing in war, a moral superiority may be asserted with the aid of modern weapons more readily than under the conditions of ancient warfare. "The enemy is vanquished," says M. Anitchkow, "not by the almost total destruction of his forces, but by the destruction of all hope of victory. To quiet minds we may add that the expression 'to fight to the last man ' is only a phrase, giving to the intention of fighting bravely a rather strong emphasis. It would sound very, strange if an army should make a promise to fight till a loss of 20 per cent, of its total number was arrived at, although, in reality, such a loss would be more than sufficient." To what extent this theory will be supported by the present war we have not yet the data for judging. But the immense debt of modern warfare to the curative and preventive work of medical science and to the skill of the surgeon is fortunately beyond question. The sufferings on the battlefield are still too terrible to contemplate, yet they are trifling in comparison with those of the days before antiseptics and anaesthetics and the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross Society. It is still true that the microbe kills more than the bullet. No European war has yet reversed this rule. Possibly the wonderful hospital and sanitary organisation of the Japanese made their war against Russia an exception on their side, but we have not the figures available. A good example of a European campaign under the old conditions is, furnished by the Crimean War of 1854-56. As against 2840 killed in battle the British lost 18,300 from sickness, and this in spite of the fact that Miss Nightingale showed how to reduce the mortality in the hospitals from 42 to 2 per cent. On the Russian side the disproportion was even larger, the losses from sickness being more than twelve times as large as the direct losses in battle. Let not the horrors of war as it is still carried on to-day blind us to the immense progress that has been madein this respect. There has never been a war in which the ministrations of women have been better organised for the relief of suffering than the present one. It is good to hear of the Red Cross Society in London having hundreds more applications for work than it can deal with. We hear much of abuses, or alleged abuses, of the Red Cross flag. Let us not forget to be thankful for the immense work of mercy that quietly proceeds without hitch or advertisement of any kind.