The Otago Witness. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY (WEDNESDAY, MARCH SO, 1904.)

Otago Witness, Issue 1851, 30 March 1904, Page 48

The Otago Witness. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY (WEDNESDAY, MARCH SO, 1904.)

THE WEEK.

" Xisqtan iliud Datura, aiiud «apienti* cHxit."— Jcvcxu, " Soxl nature sad good leuse must erer join."'— Popi,

There is a pause in military operations between Russia and Japan, The War of the a pause which may well be Futare. taken advantage of to

glance at four books recently issued, each treating of war past, present and future. Time will be better employed in studying these -works than when perusing the painfully manufactured cablegrams in which the unfortunate war correspondent, driven distracted by the difficulty of obtaining news for daily consumption, vainly endeavours to justify his existence. First amougst the quartet of wa-r volumes comes the biography of a model soldier, a man without fear end without reproach, for such was John Colborne, Lord Seaton. Here we find pictures of war in the first part of the nineteenth century — in Holland, Spain, Italy. »nd Canada — full of attractiveness ; biit then, as now, to quote General Sherman's well-worn phrase^ "War is he 11.." Nest in

order comes Viscount Wol«el«y's autobiography, perhaps the most readable amonjwt recent publications dealing with militansm in the last half of tbe last century. In, all tbe conflicts in ■which be took part, commencing with tbe Crimean War, on through the Indian Mutiny, the Chinese War, and the war in Ashanti, although Lord Wolseley loves soldiering, and apparently cannot have jtoo mucJi of it, he shows again and again that England has always been habitually unprepared for war. But that is no reason, as Captain Malian pertinently points out in "Retrospect and Prospect'" — the fourth, book on our list, — why Great Britain should further tempt fortune by failing to correct practical deficiencies which have been revealed. Lord Wolseley' s one remedy for the mistakes of the past seems to be "a highly-trained army, supported by great reserves of trained soldiers," but lie -nould ■undoubtedly agree with Captain Mahan in the latter's statement that the military and strategic problems of the day are in essence only new phases of a steady progression. What is of the greatest interest in. Captain Mahan's book is the conclusions arrived at by this distinguished American concerning the influence of the Boer war on British prestige, for while the lives of Lords Seaton and Wolseley instruct us as to the past, Captan Mahan deals with the present. First of all, the American author calls attention, to the enormous asset which the British had in their wellearned fame, and although Captain Mahan inclines to the opinion that that prestige has suffered diminution through the South African war, he is good enough, to declare that this is an affair of the head and not of the heart. He affirms that loss of prestige worth considering will only come when the nation loses heart, for ''prestige is the moral influence which past successes, as the pledge and promise of future ones, breed." Despite a degree of unreadiness and inadeqiiaey. Great Britain bears, the burdens of het wars, and finally wins her victories, by national endurance, supported by superior resources and strengthened by "the felt goodness of her cause around which determination could narden." And in these substantially strong qualities of national character, Captain Mahan< does net hesitate- to -declare that the foundations of British prestige are *the same as they ever have been. Then comes the question — which Jean de Bloch, the Russian author in "The (Future of War,'" sets himself to answer — Will these foundations, whether of British, or of any other military prestige, remain the same? The man wllofs work suggested the Hague Peace 'Conference to the mind of the Czar, and who may be regarded »s having some .authority to prophesy concerning the military future of the world, answers that question by a prompt negative. According to B]och, the war of the future is "the war in which grest nations armed to the teeth are to fling themselves with all their resources into a struggle for life and death," as in the case of Russia and Japan. Thus war becomes impossible for minor States, and the Russo-Polisb thinker contends that the maintenance of war has become aibsolutelv impossible, because the actual dlevelcpnient < '" the mechanism of war renders war almost r.n inmracticable operation.

It was Eudyard Kipling who declared that he relied foi the extinction What TTill of war upon the invention Bender War of a machine which would Impossible. infallibly slay 50 per cent.

jf the combatants whenever a battle -was waged. A similar idea was expressed by Lord Lytton in that now almost forgotten book, ''The Coming Race." Jean de Blocb says that at Khartoum, in the Soud-an, the destruction inflicted upon the Dervishes came very near to Kipling's 50 per cent, standard, and he goes on to -argue that the outward and visible end of ■the war is in the introduction of a magazine rifle of a, very small calibre. The iise of rangefinders and high explosives has rendered rifle and artillery fire so much more deadly than in the wars of the past tiiat an extension of the same principle bids fair to render war an impossibility. Another element still more formidable is the immensity of the modern army. The Franco-German war was supposed to be a contest of giants, but the German army operating in France did not exceed half a million of men ; whereas to-day, should war break out, the C4ermans could concentrate over a million men upon the frontier, whilst the French would not be far behind them. A war between the Dual and Triple Alliances would probably result in 10 millions of men taking the field. The training of officers has not kept pace, ■with tihe extension and development of modem armaments, and before such a war had lasted many weeks the majority of the officers would have been killed, and without officers the armies would degenerate into mere mobs. Not only does Bloch see difficulties in the way of modern %-ay arising from the immense improvement wrought in the mechanism of slaughter, and with the unmanageabilitv of the masses of men to be mobilised, bufc also in the economic impossibility of waging war upon the on which it must be waged if the Great Poweis decide to take a hand. The experience of the present conflict between Japan and Russia should

prove of educative value in det-er mining tli-e correctness of the theories put forth by the author of '"The War of the Future," who inveighs against the delusion that great armies are the support of government, or that military service acts boneficially on the nia^es.

The unreliability of wnr news emanating

from Russian sources need Press Censorship occasion no surprise when in the system of press censorRossis, ship in vogue in Russia i«

con&idered. The announcement that tlie censorship on telegrams iiom Russia to other countries has been abol ihhed may be taken for what it is "north, especially when read in conjunction with the despatch from St. Petersburg that the Russian public is left almost wholly in tJie

d:u-k as to the progress of t3ie war. The ne^ spapers are allowed to publish only the most meagre intelligence contained in the official bulletins, and already two newspapers have been punished tor giving cunency to Avar news alleged to be erroneous. The nature of the Russian press censorship may be fairly gauged by a reference to a few of the " warnings "' given or punishments inflicted upon Ruo-jian newspapers within the la«t five years. One of the most important daily journals in the Empire, the Novoe Vreinya, was suppressed for a week <m account of an editomJ entitled "Labour Trouble 0 ." A Moscoav paper was .suspended ior two months because of an article upon "the collection of subscriptions for the Dukhobors." Another leading paper had to go out of business for two months, whilst dozens of other journals acd magazines have been suspended for periods of from two to eight months, without any definite reasons beyond that their tendency was prejudicial. The proscribed articles which called down condign punishment upon the heads of the unfortunate editors dealt with., amongst others, the following subjects : — Trades Unions, The Woman Question, Liberty of Conscience, Contemporary Science, The Evils of the Day, whilst one paper came under the ban "for manifesting what the censor calkd a "light-minded tendency." The libel laws, of our own colony tire evidently a flea-bite compared with Russian restriction, and we fear that the übiquitous "Civis," if he happened in Rus«ia, would find it not easy to evade the regulation against "light-mindedness."'

It is amusing to examine the extraordinary reasons assigned by the Some Curiosities Russian censors for the very of free use of ths red pencil Censorship, which leads to that ugly

obliteration of papers and magazines so familiar to travellers in Russia. A professor who wrote a long article for a Russian review was astonished to find that the only word' consored was "Corner-stone." Inquiry elicited the fact that the ecclesiastical censor had decreed that the rise of the word as symbolical of the Christ in Holy Writ forbade its use in connection with any profane system of philosophy. On another occasion, when a history for the use of schoolis was under consideration, the censor seriously proposed to strike out all references to Mohammed and Mohammedanism, on the ground tha.t it was a false religion, and that Mohannmed himself was '"a good for nothing." A Russian author who had translated a novel called " Passion's Slave " was informed by the censor that, the title could not be approved for the reason that " his gracious Imperial Majesty had freed all the serfs in Russia, and there were no longer any slaves in the Empire." Protest was of no avail, and eventually the book Was published under the absurd title of "Passion's Negro," to which no objection was taken. Another censor objected to the word "Prussic acid" in a text book on chemistry, translated from an English original. '"In Germany," said the censor to the translator, '"they call it 'hydrocyanic acid,' and you must do the same, because ' Prussic acid ' is likely to give offence to the Germans, w hicJi at the present moment is not our policy at al].'' These may be extreme instances of the exasperating system of censorship in vogue in Russia, but what can be exi)ected of a ]>ei>ole who are treated by their Government as if they were not fit to be trusted either with freedom of speech or even with knowledge of fact*?

If the United States boasts of many men of the moral fibre of GoverTlie Turn noi Montague, of Virginia, of the Tide the tide of public opinion Against against lynching may be Lynching. sa j c i to be on the eve of

turning in America. At a place called Roanoke, a negro entered the house of a -white man and committed an assault on his wife and daughter, the details of which are so fiendishly brutal that it is quite impossible to print them, and it would be equally impossible for most people to read them if printed. The crime was probably the most horrible ever committed in Virginia. The brute who committed it seems to have exhausted his ingenuity in devising means of torture upon his unhappy victims. There could not have been a more terrible provocation than this negro gave to the community, and a thirst for vengeance took possession of the place. Governor Montague, who was at Florida when the news of the assault reached him, at once took train to the scene of the tragedy. Seeing the impossibility of securing a fair trial at Roanokp, the Governor induced the Legislature to pass a bill empowering a judge to grant a change of venue for a petitioning prisoner. The judge, however, refused to act under this law, and the Governor, in order to protect the prisoner, ordered a large body of militia from the neighbouring towns, and s.ent them into Roanoke by special train. A jury was at once impannelled, and the criminal was tried and sentenced to be hurg within a few hours of the commission of the outrage, the sentence to take effect within six weeks. Thus hy his prompt action GoA T yrnoi Montague protected the rights of o, criminal, no matter what his offence, by siirrouii/ding him with troops and securmu; him a tiial by jury. The Governor's action cpiniot be too highly comraf-ii'led. He lips cut the armri.l from

iukLt the lyncheiV own arguments by instantly invoking the mil'l.iry p.^wr of the Suite ; he ha* secured a prompt ti'al: he ha* in addition secured the pa^f-ag' of a Liw winch provides that v. omen who have been la* 1 vicums of ciiminal a^.-ault shall nut bo compelled to give evidenco in open court, but that then' ti^tiniouv may be taken yt> their own hom^s ; and it now only 'remains to abolish appeals, except on the certificate of the trial judge. The Governor has shown the way to secure prompt pui'ishinent for thtsr- outrages without having recourse to mob violence, and it is to be hoped that his example may be followed by thope in iuvfh<rity in other parts of the States. Thus tks lynching

scandal will be gradually wiped out, and America's record be kept clean in this respect.