NERVE-STRAINING MAUSERS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11806, 16 December 1912, Page 2

NERVE-STRAINING MAUSERS.

The modern battle (says the Hamburger Nachriehten) demands quite a different kind of courage and will from that which was necessary in the old wars, when a soldier met his enemy face to face, parried liis blows, took advantage of his weak points, and by sheer daring and valor overcame him. It was no mer.e accident that in the Ensso-Japanese war a surprising number of nervous breakdowns were recorded. The impersonality of the modern battle only heightens its terror. The combatant is in truth not a man but a ball whistling invisibly through the air. The consciousness born of personal courage that one can by one's own personal strength and daring take danger by the horns, so to speak, finds but scantv exercise for its powers in modern war. Colonel Maude recently published a book on war, which was full of illustrations of the psychology of modern warfare. AVhen General Botha came to England after the South African war, the uninitiated were astonished at the peculiar expression on his face. Personal courage in a strong fighting man is popularly supposed to show itself through the medium of a serene cheerfulness and a certain heroic calm. Here stood a man who times without number had looked death fearlessly in the face, yet his face always bore an expression of nervous tension; his whole nature seemed to be continually on the watch, to be listening for something; there was a strained look about his eyes; if you sat opposite.him for any length of time you felt that there was something almost painful to contemplate, certainly something very mysterious in this air of unceasing nervous strain. Only the men who had taken part in South African battles remained unmystified, for all who had been through that war bore the same expression, and had the same look iii their eyes. During tine war a. new word was coined to express this particular frame of mind, the word "mauseritis," which connoted that state of" the nerves which, arose from the conditions of modern warfare. Months, years passed by before the eye of the veteran lost that restless, strained watchful look, the product of those hours when for days together bullets whistled 'past, carrying their messages of death. General Botha has himself said that human nature can never get accustomed to certain phenomena of the "modern battlefield, and a highly-placed British officer, well-known for his personal daring and contempt of death, has gone yet further, and declared that nervousness increases with every fresh battle. One starts with a, certain stock of courage, but every engagement nibbles at it. It is only avery few men, possessed of no nerves at all, who lose in the first encounter that feeling of intense strain which oppresses everyone before their first battle. The great majority, no matter how brave-they may be, find themselves compelled to smother their nervousness by sheer force of will. • The reminiscences of Major-General Meckel, who reorganised the Japanese army, are very interesting on. this point. He tells us how in 1870 he led his company for the first time to the battlefield; they were late in their arrival, and had to cross country where the fight had been raging furiously. . "I was accustomed," he says, "to the sight of dead and wounded men, but I was not prepared for what now met my eyes. The field was literally sown with bodies." Here and there were fellows who had dropped behind, tinwounded men, whose will-power had evaporated, whose nerves were exhausted, soldiers who had reached the end of their tether, and could not be induced to go any further. "Wherever a bush or a hole presented itself there cowered these fellows, and stared at us apathetically." The eight of these scattered stragglers had its influence on Meckel's men. "I looked behind at my men. They were beginning to feel uncomfortable. Some were pale. I myself was conscious of the depressing influence exerted by the surroundings. If the fire of the breechloaders, which we were now advacing to meet for the first time, .and the- continual roll of which sounded in our ears, could so disorganise this regiment, what would happen to us?" , ' - A couple of the stragglers screwed' their courage up to join the advancing regiment, others by. a desperate effort followed in their wake, but when, Meckel's company came under fire most of these fellows a'gain vanished. Despite, every* effort'of .'their wills their nerves - refused to stand the test.