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Southland Times, Issue 8079, 6 August 1885, Page 2

The nnDouocenjont th'it Sir Frederick Roberts hna been appointed conituander-in-chicf in lu-iin will give, Dot only satiafaction, but a very sincere pkastfc to the British nation. No promotion could have been better deserved. Sir Frederick will mako r« worthy successor to Sir Donald Stewart, tinder whose command be won his laurels. Wo have often Wondered how Sir Garnet (now Lord) Wolselcy came to be called "onronlyQenei.il." If we mistake cot, he ha i h on awarded this distinction befoie his Egyptian eampiiga, when ho was chit fly kno.vn as tho leader of two FiTi'ill expeditions — one of them a very small aliiir indeed. Both expeditions were excellently well conducted, but they formed a slender foundation for such an extraordinary title. Ev,ju lhe defeat of the Egyptian "rebel" was a comparatively humble performance The immense preparations without whic'i Sir G'irDt-t would not vent'jro to risk an action with the rabble who hai gathered round the " national " standard were charact-ristic of tbe man, but to a onldii-i of: the Ntpoleon stamp they would haVe ctlggest d the idea of setting a pack of fox hounds to kill a mouse. We are bound to cay that either Sir Donald Stewart or Sir Frederick Roberta would have doubled up Arabi in half the time and at half the cost. We will not say that Sir Garnet's victory did not deserve a peerage, but we will say that many a greater achievement has gone without one ; and it certainly could only have been for the Scotch reason of maicbC nae sicpha'ras that Admiral Saymour was raised to the sanae place for tsmaahing a couple of forts and killing a lot of poor Egyptians with his big guns at Alexandria ! And if either of the two soldiers we have named would have crumpled up Arabi in a jiffy, so would neither of them have made such a bungle of the Nile campaign— a failure which, according to Lord Napier of Magdala, no bad judge, will eeriouely affect the military reputation of Great Britain. And this brings us back to the strange luck that should have dubbed Wolseley " our only General" when men like Stewart and Roberts were maintaining, and more than maintaining, the honour of the British arms in Afghanistan. Perhaps there was, after all, a touch of irony in the designation. Otherwise it was certainly unjust to those two distinguished Indian officers, to name no others, Sir Frederick Roberts' march from Cabul to dndahar is one of the modi remarkable achievements in modern Warfare. When Sir Frederick and h's chief (with the help, of course, of other brave officer?, such ag Gough and Prim-ro-tr, to aay nothing of the equally brave rank nod file) had nearly quieted Afghanistan for the second time, nowa came that Ayoub J£han, nephew of Yakoub (who had now been, deposed), and lately Governor of. Herat, had put himself at thy head of a large hostile forco Rear $ftj

towD, and was marching in the direction of Candahar. Ho had already fallen in with General Burrows, who foolishly gave him battle at Maiwand, with the result that his (Burrows') brigade was completely shattered, only 1000 out oE some three times that number having escaped. This was the only disaster that had befallen our army daring the two Afgbnn wars, and Ayoub must of course be suppressed with all expedition. Sir Frederick Roberts accordingly started at once from Cabul at the head of a force oC 10,000 men. His march was through a wild mountainous country, inhabited by a hostile people, and very little known to the British. Tho merit of the plan belongs, we believe, to Sir Donald Stewart, but the merit of the execution to Sir Frederick alone. He disappeared from view and was not heard of for three weeks, during which time there was many an anxious thought as to hia safety. He at length, however, emerged all right near Candohar. The march had been conducted without misadventure, and with wonderful celerity. If we remember right, Sir Frederick reached the neighbourhood of Candahar, where the remains of. Burrows' force, together with General Primrose! and other British troops, were beleaguered by Ayoub, on the last day of August, 1879. He gave his men one day's rest after their long toil&omfi march, and next morning (2nd September) fell upon Ayoub, knocked his array all to pieces at ona blow, and so ended the second Afghan war. That is the way our Indian generals fight, with quick, sharp Napoleoaic strokes, genius and daring being substituted for tho cumbrous and expensive method of elaborate precaution amdpreparatioD. We might almost cay that WolseJey'a chief object seems to be to avoid defeat, whereas a soldier like Roberts puts defeat out of the calculation, and marches straight for victory.

The Lyttelton Times has devoted an article to the speech which Mr Donald Reid delivered on the East and West Coa^t Railway proposals at the recent meeting of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce, and a very extraordinary article it is. It begins with eaying that the " excited clamour " and " stage thunder" of " tha "Ejapire City" have found an echo in other places, and then all of a heap comes this portentous rumble from tlio L. Times itsell!— "Emotional enemies emery ng everywhere enen/eticolly expend excited eloquence.' 1 Tnie we take to be the most tremendously alliterative sentence ever penned in the English luoguage ; the pity jb that such a prodigy should be itself only an example of " excited eloquence energetically expended '' bj an extremely " emotional enemy " of the opponents ot Mfiggs and Co.'s proposal. The L. Times, in the article in question, trice its hand (rather a clunky one) at ridiculing the Bcotch (what superfine nationality may our contemporary a " fighting editor " belong to?), but there is one Scotch stanza which we should have said it ought to coa day and night, wore it not only too evident* that it is hardly responsible for ita words : — • Oh, wad some Power the giftie gie' us To see oursel'a as others see us ! It wad frae mony n blunder free U9 And foolish notion. The L. Times also quotes poetry, apropos of the "emo'ional enemies," but it (is, alas, only to show its own lack of the ' giftie": — Fire in each ey, and papers in each hajd, They rave, recite, aud madden iound the laul, A man in liquor, it \s said, is apt to be astonished at Beeing everybody staggeriDg but bimeelf. This is exactly the case witli our contemporary. The L. Timed has been raving for a fortnight — -we will not say bow demoniacally, lest we should hurt ita feelings—ani every paper it glances at it takes to be an " emotional enemy energetically expomiing excitoH eloquence !" If it onlp kaew how cranky it has been all that time, and still ia, it would curso the day it ever heard of the respectable Meigge and Co, Mr Reid is described as a " specimen of the Scotch thistle " who "hue shown an intense amount of what wo may venture to term 1 prickly ' heat;" and after abnsirjg the eaid " thistle " and professing to refute hia speech, our excited contemporary goes on, unwittingly of course, to abuse other people. "We do not write to enrngo Mr Reid (we are, you see, to cool, so calm and collected). He will probably never Bco ibid article. We doubt whether even the most gentlemanly of Dunedin editors would dare to reprtot it in a newspaper which has BUbßCiibers of tho Reid type.' 1 Our poor demented contemporary fitst insults thp editor of the Otago Daily Times with its odious compliment, and then adds injury to insult by hinting that ho ia not master in hia own house, The editor of the Daily Times will no doubt pardon this " gentlemanly " insinuation out of tenderness for his contemporary's mental con« dition. And to show how much thu L-, Titneß requires commiseration we shall auoto the conclusion of its article !— "Mr lieid would mako nrgumpfit impossible! We arc a litllo aahnmed that this Island should contain a Chamber of Commerce capable of applauding ouch ti ppeech aa hia. Wo are a liitle astonished that so typical a specimen of the prickly and unamiable thistle tibe should trust himself among aa audience asinine enough to swallow hia assertions wholesale. Surely be might have feared that such nn audience might be tempted to find its moat natural and proper fool by devouring him." Elicul^eheu! There can be only one explanation of such an exhibition as this. Who does not pity the poor Lytteltjn Times?