IS WAR LESS DESTRUCTIVE?

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11606, 13 April 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

IS WAR LESS DESTRUCTIVE?

Some authorities claim that the im- , provement in arms has rendered war- -| fare less destructive, and that in these . days of fearful engines of wiar. the , slaughter is less than it was in the . old days of muskets, of hows and arrows and of hand to hand conflicts, i Under no primitive conditions of fight- < ing, when gunpowder was unknown, , wars drifted: on for generations, even { for centuries. England waged war with , Scotland almost without intermission for a hundred years, and for a like , period with France. The Thirty Years' War and, later, the Seven Years' War,. , are epochs in military history. t The American civil war, though , fought with muzzle-loading guns, lasted but four years.. About a year thereafter Prussia overcame Austria in seven , short weeks, and in 1871 the German J power overwhelmed that of France in , eight months. The United States Navy J took only ninety days to destroy the > power of Spain in two oceans. ( If the figures of history are correct. , terrible slaughter reigned in the old days when 4nen met in hand-to-hand conflict and quarter was neither asked \ nor gjiven. In 451 A.D., at the battle of Chalons, when Attila. the Hun and : the Roman legions under Actius met, it is said that not fewer than 100,000 . men were slain. Indeed, by some the number of killed! has been placed as high as 300,000. At Hastings some 30,000 men fell, though the numbers engaged were small in comparison with those in modern battles. At the Metaurus Hasdrubal's Cartha- : ginians v.-ere practically annihilated. At Aquae Sextiae and Verzellae the Cimbri and Teutons were completely exterminated bv Marius; a hundred years later 30,000 Romans were' wiped but by Arminius in Teutoberg Forest, and 80.000 Roman citizens of the Greek cities were slain in a single day by the soldiers of Mithridates. At Crecy there fell 1200 French knights, 1400 gentlemen, and 4000 men at arms, besides 30,000 of inferior rank; 10,000 men were killed .at Agmcourt and 14,000 were taken prisoners; and about 10,000 men, too, were slain out of the 76.000 who fought at Flodden; while out of the 1000.000 engaged in the fierce battle of Towton 36,300 are reported to have fallen .in-the battle and pursuit. In all these' old-time battles, where the weapons were bows and arrows, sworda and battle axes, and whem no weapon was available that could kill at a.' distance of more than a few hundred yards, the mortality frequently rose to one in every three or four fighters en"aged, and sometimes exceeded this enormous percentage; whereas m modem battles, with weapons far more deadlv, a. proportion of one m twenty, it is claimed, has rarely been exceeded. At Alma the casualties were nltyfour a thousand, or, roughly, one to 18.5; at T.nkerman they were one in twentv; at Sedan, one in sixty; at Gravelotte, one in 111, and -at Waterloo, one'in twenty-four. In the Crimean War, it has been calculated, ./4Z were required to dispatch one fighter,-and at Gibraltar 258,38/ shot and shell found only 1341 human, tar- ' < and of these manv were merely wounded. During the : War one fighter was disabled by every ; 254 shots.

The water-power of Norway suitable for practical" use all the year round amounts to 4.000.000 horse-power. Tn addition, 1,500.000 horse-horse ■ can be •counted on ■ during three-quarters of the year. The country thus has 40.00d.000.00q horsepower hours a rear, the equivalent, of abotit3o.aoo.Oon ton«. of coal. Putting the value of coal at 16s n ton. the Norwegian waterpower is- worth £24.000.000 annually. The Admiralty are busy in the preparation of plays; for No 2 airship, which is to be built by Viokers Limited, nt Barrow-jn-Furness. where the first naval dirigible was built, which was wrecked on the occasion of her launch. The Admiralty have by the.ir oxporioncc of the. wrecked No. 1. and completing a design l which, it is said, is certain to prove a success. It is l-nn--n tint "the Admiralty'. nroposef to build a fleet of airships and aeroplane? f'U- naval' purposes, after the bivVvto. of vesself'of those types has. been assured, and it is expected this will prove to be a very busy industry for: Barrow later on.