Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 25, 27 October 1898, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

'Take my word for it,' said Wellington, 'if some soudan you had seen but one day of war you would atrocities, pray to Almighty God that you might never see such a thing again.' The saying is brought forcibly to me by some incidents which followed hard on the heels of the sweeping victory of Omdurman. It was indeed a remarkable victory : (1) by reason of the headlong courage of the wild sons of the desert who fought under the Khalifa ; (2) by reason of the disproportion of the slain ; (3) by reason of the deliberate butchery of the wretched Dervish wounded when the fight was done. The back-bone of Madhism is broken. It is, if not quite dead, in articulo mortis. The white-clad hordes of the desert, with their swords and spears and shields, have proved themselves about the finest fighting material on the surface of the earth. But their last stand is made. They withered up before cool discipline, military skill, and the tempest of the machine-guns. The price paid in blood for the destruction of Madhism was marvellously cheap. Only 47 British troops and native auxiliaries were killed and 342 wounded. The Dervishes lost 10,800 killed and 16,000 wounded. There is a magnificent disproportion between the losses on both sides which recalls the feats of the Chinese hero in the Flowery Scroll: His little army, with the loss of only one pig-tailed head, contrived to slaughter a million of their Tartar toes.

There is, however, nothing wrong with the figures. The wild and reckless daring of the Arabs, the steady volleying of all arms, the pursuit, alone account for a heavy slaughter. The massacre of the wounded Dervishes after the fight has also helped to swell the list. This savage method of warfare will take a good deal of energetic explanation before English subjects can afford to look the facts of the battle of Omdurman full ; quare in the face and not feel ashamed. After the fight, bodies of Soudanese troops were told off to kill the wounded Dervishes that lay upon the field. A London despatch to the New York Journal of September 7 states that British troops also took part in the grim work. ' Omdurman was not tl c first battle where this was done,' says the Journal. ' Since Gordon's death it has been the custom, because a wounded fanatic is more dangerous than a sound one.' A writer in the Saturday Review gives the following fearful picture of what he personally witnessed: 'In the campaign of 1885 parties of English soldiers, commanded by English officers, used to go out to kill the wounded. One private prodded the helpless body between the shoulders with his bayonet. If there was no movement the party went on. Ifthe dervish proved alive and squirmed, another private instantly blew his brains out.' It all reads like a leaf from the history of what the Hessians, the Ancient Britons, and the Orange yeomanry did on the battlefields of the Irish insurrection of 1798. A wounded Dervish with sword or spear or knife may be a dangerous foe. But so is an armed burglar, wounded or unwounded ; so is a footpad with his 'life-preserver.' And yet an unromantic policeman is prepared at any moment to ' tackle ' either. A wounded tiger or elephant is dangerous. And yet half-naked Hindus help to capture them any week of the year. Must we be told that a triumphant army is so •afraid of wounded men that they can devise no means of dealing with them otherwise than by massacre — for that is the word ? The United States troops treated the Sioux, the Apaches, and Sitting Bull's braves according to the usages of civilised warfare. British officers have stained a great victory — or rather a series of splendid victories — over a ruthless foe by adopting a method of campaigning which is hopelessly out of tune with the principles of civilised warfare. * * * One is tempted to ask, with Truthful James :

' Is our civilisation a failure ? Or is the Caucasion played out V We are — or profess to be— -a Christian people. And yet we calmly revert to methods of warfare that are distinctly pagan and barbarian. Christianity effected three great changes in warfare : (1) It prevented the slaughter of the wounded on the battle-field ; (2) It suppressed the gladiatorial shows, and thereby saved vast numbers of prisoners-of-war from a violent death in the arena ; (3) it set its face hard against the practice of selling captives into slavery, ransomed vast numbers of them by the aid of private funds, pious associations, and by the sale of church -property and even of the sacred vessels of the sanctuary. (4) Another important function of the Church was the slow but sure formation of a high .warlike ideal, Lecky says : ' The ideal knight of the Crusades and of chivalry, uniting all the force and fire of the ancient warrior, with something of the tenderness and humility of the Christian saint, sprang from the conjunction of the two streams of religious and of military feeling ; and although the ideal, like all others, was a creation of the imagination not often perfectly realised in life, yet it remained the type and model of warlike excellence to which many generations aspired ; and its softening influence may even now be largely traced in the character of the modern gentleman.' The ' modern gentlemen ' who ordered the slaughter of the wounded at Omdurman falls wofully below the ideal of the Christian soldier. War is horrible enough, in all reason, trick and deck it out and huzzah over it as you will. With the grim work of Omdurman thrown in, it fills the bill of Napoleon's definition to the bursting-point : it is ' a trade of barbarians.'

There is a limitless credulity in the fullmore jesuits blown believer in the 'Jesuit in disguise* in disguise, that throws into the shade the simple, openmouthed gobemoucherie that accepts as gospel the adventures of Sindbad the Sailor and Baron Munchausen. The matter is still being agitated in the London papers. The Spectator of September 10 throws a good load of ridicule on the mental eccentricities of the Bishop of Liverpool, who, with a faith that was simple and childlike, declared that there are no fewer than fifty ' Jesuits in disguise ' acting as clergymen in the Church of England. ' There is,' says the editor, ' an example of this anti-Jesuit prejudice in an Oxford story of a distinguished High Church clegyman of the old school. This excellent man saw Jesuits everywhere, and one day, while walking in the High, thought he recognised in the errand-boy ot the chief Oxford fishmonger the face ot a choirboy he had noticed in a Jesuit church in Rome. It was the work of an instant to cross the High and communicate to the fishmonger the dreadful intelligence that he had a Jesuit novice in his employment. The fishmonger, however, denied the fact, and declared that he had known the lad since he was "knee-high." "This proved what I had never before suspected," said the clergyman ; " that Mr. — — [the fish* monger] was himself a Jesuit." '

Another good sample of the fine old myth was furnished to the columns of the Times by an Anglican clergyman, Rev. Hubert Courtney Hodson. In 1872 a Protestant lady of his acquaintance became a Catholic. Forthwith rumours went around that for years beforehand, while attending the services of the Church of England, she was all the time a 'Jesuit in disguise.' A letter from Rev. Hubert Courtney Hodson elicited the following reply in point from Cardinal Newman :— ' No lady, while continuing to attend the services of the Church of England or to receive Anglican Communion, or to teach in Anglican schools, or frequenting Anglican worship, or in any way professing conformity to the Church of England, has at the same time been in full communion or in any communion (to any knowledge of ours), or in any understanding whatever, with our Oratory church or (to our knowledge) with any Catholic church. Such acts would constitute a great sacrilege. We abhor them and repudiate the notion of having any part in them.' The days of the fairy-tale are by no means numbered.

There is an exhilaration in a short, sudden sir William's fright, comparable to the first impact of a cold prophecy. morning shower. The wandering quack knows this well. He begins by discovering several variegated and mysterious diseases preying on the vitals of his confiding patients. This sends their hearts down into their boots. Then he proceeds to guarantee a speedy cure. This raises them up to an ecstasy ot raptuous hope and they are rather proud to have been so near death's door, just for the pleasure of being brought back again. England has enjoyed at least too such electric shocks of fear during the past thirtythree years. The first was in 1865, when Professor Jevons declared that the coal supply of England had only another hundred years to run. The news caused a sensation in England. A Royal Commission was appointed in 1866. They kept the public on the rack of expectation for five long-drawn "years. Then they reported that, at the current rate of consumption there was coal enough in the country to roast and bake and boil and manufacture for precisely 1273 years. Eleven years beforehand, in 1861, Professor Hull had made a survey of the coalfields and allowed them 1000 years of supply. The country was content. But Professor Jevons' startling announcement was cheap for the hopeful information that the Royal Commission gave.

Another mild, but shorter-lived sensation was caused by Sir William Crookes in his presidential address before the British Association at Bristol on September 7. The lull text appears in the Times of the following day. Sir W illiam prophecies nothing less than a wheat famine which is due among the bread-eating populations of the world in the year of grace 193 1. This gives us only 33 years to prepare for the inevitable. Sir William tells us that the bread-eating peoples of the world number at present 516,500,000. In the year 1931 they will count 746,500,000 hungry mouths. Now the wheat-growing area is strictly limited ; the deficit in supply is already serious ; reserves are already exhausted ; the bread-eaters are now practically living on the current harvest ; and this will speedily be unequal to the demand. Some 330,000,000 extra bushels will be required to fill the mouths of the 746,500,000 breadeaters that will be jostling each other on this planet in the fateful year 1931. The problem is : how to raise those extra bushels — in other terms : how is the average yield per acre of the world's wheat growing area to be increased from a trifle over 12^ bushels to 20 bushels ? Sir William is merciful if he is mighty. He is not satisfied with merely setting the problem and leaving us staring helplessly and hopelessly at it. He solves it too. Those of us who survive till a.d. 1931 will not, after all, have to turn to maize or acorn bread like the inhabitants of various parts of Italy, or bean-bread like the besieged of Paris in 187 1. The laboratory is to be the salvation of the bread-eater. It is to make two ears of wheat grow where only one grew before — and this by the free application of nitrates, which are the ' dominant ' manure — the favourite dish or tipple — of wheat. Now our present chief supplies of nitrates come from Chili. But the supply does not even now equal the demand. Other sources of supply must therefore be sought. The boundless atmorphere is to be levied upon. Nitrogen is to be trapped from it by electrical energy It is to be fed to the wheat-fields in the form of nitrate of soda. Niagara alone can produce 12,000,000 annually. This new fertiliser will treble the productiveness of the wheat areas and rescue the human race from famine in 193 1 and for some years later. After all, this is only postponing the evil day. But, then, the world has still three-and- thirty years left for discovery, preparation, wars, pestilences, and other favourable accidents. And that is no small mercy.

The distress in the South and West of IreTHE SILVER land has had its compensation. Over wide lining. districts . . . ' How many drank the cup Of baleful grief, or ate the scanty dole Of misery ; sore pierced by winter winds. How many shrunk into the sordid hut Of cheerless poverty !' Yet in the remaining provinces there are evidences of a slow but steady rise in prosperity. The banking-, railway, and shipping statistics for Ireland for the present year have just been published as a Parliamentary paper. It tells the following pleasant tale : The deposits and cash bal.inces in the Irish banks increased from £29,223,000 in June, 1886, to £38,758,000 in the middle of 1896. 1 here was a slight drop in June of last year, then another rally, and on the last day of June, 1898, the amount had risen to £38,973,000. This makes a record for Ireland, and is exclusive of Government and other public accounts in the Bank of Ireland. The Irish farmer is evidently doing less of his banking in the heel of an old stocking. The amount in Post Office Savings Banks — a significant item — at the end of last June was £6,957,000, an increase of £514,000 on the corresponding period ot labt year. The new movement in favour of increased acreage of farms and the spread of cottage industries may kill at last the blight that has

been lyinfr like a funeral pall over portions of the West and South. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished for. There have been great doings in Holland a young — the country where, as Hood says, they queen,, wash everything except the water. Amidst great rejoicings the young Queen Wilhemina has come of age— which means that she lias reached her eighteenth birthday— and assumed the reins of government. The olden glories of the Netherlands are gone; but the tight little land of canals and windmills over which the new Queen rules carries a population of 4,928,658 souls. Of '"these 1*596.482 are Catholics, who enjoy perfect religious toleration, and receive £48,165 out of the funds allowed by the State Budget for the support of the different Churches. The young Queen is described as witty, sociable, and of a scientific turn of mmd — a very jewel of a queen.

From Sir William Crookes' presidential science address at the meeting of the British Associaand tion : ' Upon one other interest I have not religion. yet touched —to me the weightiest and farthest - reaching of them all Thirty years have passed since I published an account of experiments tending to show that outside our scientific knowledge there exists a Force exercised by intelligence differing from the ordinary intelligence common to mortals I have nothing to retract. I adhere to my already published statements.' Other scientists may label that intelligent ' Force as they please. We call It God. Physical science and natural theology here embrace and kiss.