THE WAR OF THE FUTURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9581, 4 August 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE WAR OF THE FUTURE.

Mr. Archibald Forbes writes on " The War of the Future" in Scribner'a Magaaine. His forecast of the next great battle is worth quoting "It is virtually impossible that anyone can have accurately pictured to himself the scene in its fulness which the next great battle will present to a bewildered and shuddering world. We know the elements that will constitute its horrors but we know them only, as it were, academically. Men have yet to be thrilled to the heart by the weird ness of wholesale death inflicted by missiles poured from weapons the whereabouts of which cannot be discerned because of the absence of powdersmoke. fray, if Dr. Weiss' recently invented explosive, of which great things have been predicted, is to be brought into use in the German army, there may no longer be any powder, the' villainous saltpetre' superseded by the more devilish 'fatty substance of a brownish colour.' The soldier of the next war must) steel his heart to encounter the deadly danger incident to the explosion of shells filled with dynamite, melinite, ballistic, or some other form of high explosive, in the midst of dense masses of men. The recent campaign in Matabeleland has informed us with a grim triumph of the sweeping slaughter the Maxim gun can inflict with its mechanical stream of bullets.

Quick-firing field-guns are on the eve of superseding the type of cannon in use in the horse and field batteries of to-day. All these instruments are on term firma, if that be of any account. But if there is anything in the story of Edison's invention of a flying machine for military purposes which can be so steered as to carry and drop with accuracy five hundred pounds of explosive material at a given point, or to shed on an army a shower of : dynamite, then death incalculable may rain down as from the very heavens themselves." The wounds made by the new bullets have also to be looked-at from a hospital point of view:—" The only type of new weapon, the results of the tire from which have been actually tested on the battlefield, is the Mannlicher, which was used to a considerable extent in the Chilian civil war of 1891. As is generally known, the eisrhb millimetre projectile which the iliinnlicher throws is much lighter and of much flatter trajectory than any of the old larger bullets. Owing to its higher velocity and pointed shape, its power of perforation is extraordinary, in the matter-of-fact language of Bardeleben, ' owing to the immense velocity of the Miinnlicher ballet and its small surface of contact, it meets with little resistance in striking, causes little commotion of the neighbouring parts, has no time to stretch the various tissues it encounters, and merely punches out a hole, carrying the contused elements before it clean out of the wound, without seriously damaging the surrounding wall of track.' The now obsolete bullets fired from great distances and striking a bono frequently glanced off or rebounded. This will occur no longer ; the new long-range projectile, if it strikes at all, has sufficient force to pass through, cutting any vessels or organs ib may meet in its path. Ib is, therefore, all the more deadly. Whereas the accepted estimate of casualties in modern warfare has been in the ratio of about four men wounded to one killed, the percentage in the Chilian fighting is authentically given as four killed to one wounded. This ghastly proportion will probably not maintain itself in future battles on a larger scale; but there can be no doubt that the fighting of the future will be deadlier than that of the

past. Yet the properties of the new bullet are not entirely lethal, although it will slay its thousands and its tens of thousands. Its characteristic of absence of contusion, which contusion from the old bullet frequently stayed the bleeding of injured vessels, must result in more frequent deaths from hemorrhage, more especially in tho inevitable lack, in the future, of prompt surgical intervention. But the wounds it causes, if they do not produco immediate death or speedy dissolution from tußmorrhagc, are expected to be more amenable to treatment than those which were occasioned by the old bullet." Mr. Forbes calculates that when the first great battlo of the next great war is fought a million combatants will bo in tho Hold. On the percentage of 1870, and putting aside altogether, the effects of the recent developments in man-hurting, the casualties will exceed 140,000. According to ratios which he has calculated, of this number 35,000 would be slain, 70,000 slightly wounded, and 35,000 severely wounded. It follows that, according to present arrangements, apart from the killing of the bearers themselves during the battle, surgical assistance would be wanted for 103,000 wounded, and hospital accommodation for some 70,000. "To cope adequately with the vast aggregate of human suffering is obviously impossible." Mr. Forbes draws a picture of what he thinks will happen when the " bearer organisation" has broken down. Soldiers will have to think less of the "amenities" of war. "The- conqueror of the future, if he accepts the old-time conventional burden of his adversary's wounded, will become its victim. He will not accept the incubus. Is it to bo imagined that tho victim in such circumstances will think twice even about his own wounded, let alone the wounded of the other aide? No,, lie is in the field, not to be a hospital nurse, bub to follow up his advantage by hammering on the enemy who has departed, leaving his own winded behind, and who may come back again tomorrow to strike him, while clogged in the live and dead debris of yesterday's battle. The victor will hasten away to overtake or hang on the skirts of the vanquished army, leaving the wounded of both, sides to be dealt with as may be possible by such surgeons as he can afford, in view of future contingencies, to leave behindhand to the ministrations of cosmopolitan amateur philanthropists of the lied Cross and kindred organisations. For there will be no more military bearer companies ; in the hunger for fighting men the 100) bearers per army corps of the present will have been incorporated into a strong brigade with arms in their hands and a place in the fighting-line." The prospeeb seems terrible. Mo doubt it is this terrible prospect which keeps war still in the distance. But, Mr. Forbes sug- j gests that some features of the apparent neglect of the wounded may mitigate the gloom. The present "hustling" of the wounded man off the field often does him harm; and if he lay for twenty-four horns apparently neglected he might be better off, and certainly no worse. " All men conversant with war know instances of

extraordinary tenacity of life in wounded men who had received no attention. Segur'a well-known story of the wounded man at Borodino having found alive by thearmy. returning from Moscow has been discredited. Bub ray comrade and myself found on the fifth day after the battle of Sedan a wounded Frenchman walking about in a sequestered part of the battlefield, nob indeed with sprightliness, but without evidencing great debility; yet his lower jaw had been shot away, a wound which precluded him from eating solid food. I found also, on the third day after the battle of November 30, 1870, on the oast of Paris, in weather so bitter that sentries were actually frozen to death on their . posts, a nesb of three wounded Frenchmen lying in a hollow, not starved to death, not frozen to death, but pretty hungry, and quite alive. I may even dare to go so far as to hold that, at all events in the British service, in small wars, the soldier is coddled nowadays to the extent of being really deteriorated by overtenderness of treatment. He has an anaesthetic administered when the top joint of his little finger is being taken off { he has hypodermic injections when he has a twitch of pain he is treated with champagne, with all sorts of delicate extra?, and everything that can make a man reluctant) to own to convalescence." '