24 SEPTEMBER 1870, Page 11

ANCIENT AND MODERN WARFARE.

THERE is one significant omission in the summary of casualties which a Greek or a Roman historian appends to his narrative of a battle. There is no mention of the wounded. "There died," says Thucydides, after telling the story of the battle of Delium, which, both because it was fiercely fought on both sides, and because we have a perfectly trustworthy account of it, we may take as a leading instance, "there died of the Bceotians nearly five hundred, and of the Athenians nearly a thousand." We may suppose, indeed, that the proportion of men killed outright in these hand-to-hand fights was very large. A heavy-armed soldier, if he was wounded at all, was probably wounded to the death. But this is not the reason why we hear only of the killed. That is to

be found in the fact that the wounded were put to death as they lay upon the ground, as soon as one side or the

other had gained possession of the field of battle. Men similarly trained and armed would meet in the actual en- counter with about equal results ; but as soon as one army was forced to quit its place, its losses would be swelled by the destruction of all the disabled men whom it had been com- pelled to leave behind it, as well as by the disadvantages of re- treat. At Delium, for instance, as the Athenians were successful along half their line, the casualties of the conflict itself were probably equal on both sides, and the retreat, though broken, was soon covered by the night ; but the field was lost, and with the field the wounded. Hence came a loss double that of the conquerors, and enormous in proportion to the number engaged (the total of heavy armed in each army was about six thousand, and some of these took no share in the conflict). One thousand killed would imply in the ordinary warfare of modern times a total of men hors de combat more than equal to the whole of the army.

Imagine now a Greek warrior watching a modern battle, such, for instance, as that terrible fight at Sedan, for which the future historian will probably find a place among the "decisive battles" of the world. His first bewilderment at the vast numbers engaged got over, he misses what seems to him essential to a genuine, hard-fought battle,—" the fierce fighting and pushing of shields;" for from beginning to end it is a matter of war-engines, great and small, and the soldiers scarcely, if ever, cross hands in actual con- flict. Then it strikes him that the result is scarcely proportionate to the enormous efforts employed. The difference of numbers considered, he has seen better work done in many a little battle of the old-fashioned sort, with which he was familiar in the flesh. For he.sees that, though many are struck, comparatively few are killed outright. 'This,' he says to himself, is the sort of work that the archers used to do, though certainly they could not shoot so far ; the heavy-armed did their business far more effectually. It will come, however, to the same thing when this side or that shall be compelled to quit his position. It is quite impossible that those who retreat should carry off all their mass of wounded, or that the wounded, should drag themselves very far. When the day is done there will be a very large total of killed after all.' With what immeasurable surprise, then, would our resuscitated Greek regard what actually happens. The scales of battle begin to incline. One army has suffered more loss than the morale of its men can bear, or finds that its position 3annot be held any longer. It retreats, and, as he anti- cipated, is obliged to leave the greater part of its wounded behind it. The enemy occupies the ground. In their rear follow the surgeons and the ambulances, probably a new sight altogether to our warrior's eyes, and certainly occupied in a work which he cannot understand. He does not see the finishing-stroke which be has been expecting given, as a matter of course, to the wounded. On the contrary, the conquerors seem to mistake them for their own men. Some are tended as they lie upon the ground ; others are moved into the waggons and carried off. It seems as if as much pains would be taken to cure them as have been taken already to kill them. Ile could understand this in the case of men of distinction. It may often be better worth while to keep an enemy alive than to kill him ; but in the case of the common men it is absolutely unintelligible. It seems to him the merest waste of labour to spend infinite trouble on wounding men only to spend trouble equally infinite on making them well again.

Logically, the position of our imaginary Greek is quite unassail- able, and free from the embarrasstnentsr theoretical, certainly, and even practical, in which modern ways of thinking involve us. Stated simply, the immediate object of war is to disable as quickly and effectually, and at as little cost, danger, and loss to the belli- gerent as possible, the largest possible number of his opponents. And as long as this object is pursued with singleness of purpose, without any admixture of motives that are often indeed found in its close neighbourhood, the desire of revenge, the love of inflicting pain, and so on, it is difficult to establish, the object itself being once allowed to be legitimate, any moral difference between various modes of obtaining it. To use an effective weapon, which also inflicted great pain, because it inflicted pain, would be cruel, and therefore immoral ; to use it because it was effective, ignoring the accident of the pain, would be, putting aside any rules that civilized men may have agreed to follow, justifiable. Attempt to modify the simple principle, though we quite agree that it must be modified, and you get into a labyrinth of casuistical difficulties. It is manifestly easy to construct questions of con- science in this subject-matter which it is impossible to decide. We will take an example. A rifleman aims at the bulls-eye of the target, which represents to him the heart of an enemy. He would aim at the outer rim if his object, as a soldier, which, of course, all his practising subserves, were, as some would have it, to disable rather than to kill. As it is, we may take him to be aiming at a vital part. Offer him a rifle that ensures him hitting this part, and he will use it. Offer him a bullet that will go infallibly straight, and he will never employ any other. Now, suppose instead of such an infallibly straight-going bullet there could be invented one of equivalent power, say, of such a shape that, hit where it might, it would be just as fatal as if it struck the heart, would it be immoral to use it ? It is notorious that it is considered a dis- advantage in a rifle that it inflicts slight wounds ; and con- versely, we suppose, an advantage that it inflicts severe or fatal wounds, an advantage that would reach its maximum if the wounds were always fatal. Yet if it were proposed to steep a bullet in poison, effective but perfectly painless, the notion would be rejected with horror. It was from a somewhat different feel- ing that the use of a missile which it was thought would always be fatal, the explosive bullet, has been actually proscribed. The conscience of man revolts against the pain which would be inflicted. Yet it is not easy to draw a moral distinc- tion between the big bullet that explodes outside a man and the little one that explodes inside him. As far as pain is concerned, the aggregate inflicted by the explosive rifle bullet, compared with the common missile, would not show anything like the difference that there is between the effects of a. shell and of a cannon-ball. Other examples might easily be. found. The Prussians, for instance, would be held to be justified in diverting the Seine, and killing a quarter of a million of the Parisians by thirst or the diseases that would follow on the de- ficiency of water, but they would be execrated if they were to kill one-hundreth part of the number by poisoning a well.

There are those who argue that all these distinctions are really opposed to policy and morality. Make war, they say, as fatal and dreadful as you can ; admit of no palliation to its horrors, and it will become so intolerable that mankind will perforce take refuge from it in peace. Whatever force this argument may have, we may at once put it aside, if only for the reason that it runs coun- ter to what is manifestly the tendency of men's thoughts and feelings on this subject. The wiser course is to encourage this tendency to the utmost. For after all, the hope of universal peace is not absurd, though it has been discredited by foolish. prophecies and premature jubilations. It is absurd if it is made to rest on the opening of gigantic shops and peep-shows, on the raising to some unprecedented height of exports and imports. It is reasonable if it is built on the increasing tenderness and sus- ceptibility of the human conscience ; on its revolt, ever growing in strength, against the horrors and cruelties of warfare ; on its deter- mination to devise for them, in spite of logical consistency, every possible limitation. In these there is really the augury of a happier future, still, perhaps, indefinitely remote, yet implicitly contained in a present which is involved in a very terrible gloom.