ENGLAND'S LITTLE WARS.

Timaru Herald, Volume LII, Issue 5155, 30 May 1891, Page 3

ENGLAND'S LITTLE WARS.

(Manchester Guardian, April 14.) Tliß Indian Army is happily composed of such good materials, ifca oilicors and men are choßen from races of ouch warlike capacity, that it hi>9 usually beoi able to givo a good account of its enemies. But it is at best a small force for the work it has to do. The Mahipur affair after all is, m a military sense, a trifle. More serious mattors are going on nearly every day m India. At this moitiont thara are thrao am ill expeditions moving about Burmah on varioußorrnnde, beaideit the Tamu coluum which is to roduco Manipur. On the other frontior, ia tho district of Kohat, couth of Feshawur, a force of seven or eight thousand men is preparing for a brush with the JPathans ; that ia, with the brave mountaineers of the hills boyond tho Tildas. This sound* liko very raul fighting, for expedition!) against hill tribes boyond tho Indus are not like autumn manoeuvres. In those regions bullols find billets, and the bayonet, if it does not ben, is used with effect. The tribes who are on the war-path are Miranzaia, naXiveaof the vnlloys betwoon Eohat and the Kuram. This Kohut expedition is only one out of two or more on the same fronlior. Nothing illustrates more forcibly thaa theso many little wars wagod on frontiers a thousand miloa apurl, the complexity of tho problems which tho Imliin Government ha* to eolvo. Hach of the expeditions has ito local cause with a history, but thoy nil arise from the samo need — tho need of quiet and ordor on tho frontior. Tho Indian Government requiros all t.ha support possible from an instructed public opinion at home. That opinion should oncouMgo ita generous impulses and check its notion whon urgod by local passion or roßontmonfc, and m questions such an that of tho future Manipur should weigh well the arguments put; forward by experienced Anglo-Indians like Sir Jftines Johnstone.