THE ASHANTEE WAR.
THE necessity for the Ashantee War seems to be at last generally admitted, though for reasons which are almost farcical in their ineptitude. The King of Ashantee, a singularly blood-thirsty barbarian, took it into his head either that a tribute of twopence-halfpenny a year, which was or was not paid to him by the Dutch, ought to be still paid to him by the English ; or wanted a territory on the seaboard which belonged to us ; or, as we believe, was mortally provoked by the supersession of a people who gave up fugitive slaves by a people who refuse to commit that particular form of crime. He, therefore, made a sudden raid into British territories, with a purpose and plan of driving the British into the sea, killed as many of our dark subjects as he could, attacked our fort of Elmina, and retained in some dungeon four British Missionaries engaged among a tribe under British protection. Had the invasion happened in Jersey, we should be by this time at war with France ; had it happened in India, the Chief of the guilty tribe would be in lifelong confinement as a State prisoner, and the victory probably not mentioned in the Gazette ; but as it happened on the Gold Coast, where there are no sanitary arrangements, and our capital, instead of being fixed in the healthy region selected by the natives, is fixed at the lowest point of a dangerous Terai, or marshy slip between the sea and the mountains, it was sup- posed by everybody but Government and the Anglo-Indians to be better to patch up a peace. People might die if we didn't, and as we pay only £30,000,000 a year in order to secure persons who will die for the national honour, the idea of war was determinately deprecated. Our territory had been invaded, our allies massacred, our flag threatened, but still it would, according to the Times, have been much wiser to do nothing except repel Ashantee attacks. It happened, however, that Com- modore Commerell wished to make a reconnaissance, made it, was entrapped by false intelligence into an ambuscade, and with two or three officers and a few men was severely wounded. Thereupon we have an instant admission that the war, which was indispensable for Imperial interests, and even to maintain Imperial pledges to our own tribes, was indispensable to punish a bush-trick, and should be waged upon a fitting scale. Only it must not be so waged as to be of the slightest use. If we are not to occupy Coomassie, to defeat the Ashantee army, to replace the King by some civilising Prince, and to make trade indisputably safe in the high and healthy region, the war is of no use, and we shall have waged it not for the benefit of the Empire and mankind, but for a point of honour which is the merest triviality. What we are fighting for is to subject, under one form or another, a large region of Africa to civilised authority ; to give a grand territory a chance of peaceable and free development, and to open up a trade which, if the reports about the gold mines are true, may be as valuable as the trade with any colony $- not to give the Ashantee chief an opportunity for shedding a little more blood per diem than usual, because he is half angry and half frightened. As for the oue given by Sir Stafford Northoote's attack, it is utterly unworthy of him, both as a statesman and as the man who man- aged the Abyssinian war. He actually pleads for a summons to Parliament to vote war when our territories have been invaded,—when the only thing to be done is to repel the invasion at once by the only reasonable means —a smash up of Coomassie. Supposing the Administrator of the Coast to have had the power at hand, would Sir S. Northcote blame him for repelling invasion as fiercely as he could ; and what difference does his powerlessness make ? Would Sir S. Northcote cashier a post-captain for returning an enemy's fire before Parliament had voted the expenditure necessary to replace the shells ? We know quite well that he would not, that his speech was dictated by party bitterness, and that in Lord Kimberley's place he would have acted just as Lord Kimberley is doing ; but he should remember that on questions of war England knows of no parties, and that the party sacrifice he would instantly make in a great war is equally required of him in a little one.
We are happy to perceive that the Government have decided on the larger policy ; that they have, at all events, decided to reach Coomassie, and defeat the man who reigns there, killing twenty-five human beings a week ; replacing him, let us hope, by Prince Ansah, or better still, by the first Indian civilian they can catch ; or best of all, by any of hall-a-dozen dare-devils of experience whom they have at command, and who, with a Mohammedan guard, would rule the Ashantees till the tribe had renounced its tradition of war for the regular pursuits of agriculture. Colonel Gordon, Mr. Gifford Palgrave, Captain Glover, or any one of .a dozen Indian Generals sauntering about at home, would keep Ashantee as quiet as Jamaica, and leave the people to cultivate in peace, without a shilling of expense to the British Trea- sury. The transmission of the railway, of the steel steamers built to float in three feet of water, of three thou- sand Europeans, of traction-engines—though, of course, the tsetse-fly will kill them in the papers in a day or two—of all the stores which seem so limitless when real work is meant, prove that their minds are made up to avoid defeat, and that their proceedings are directed by some intelligence. If they do not send the telegraph cable, so much the better. Cable telegrams from a seat of war are very pleasant things for journalists, and for those who are waiting wearily for news of their relatives, but unfortunately they can carry messages both ways, and nothing cripples dashing operations, such as will be required in December, like a wire rope round the neck of the Commander-in-Chief, to be tugged at by War-Office clerks. The business of Government at home is to see that its General is competent—which has been done—to see that a man to replace him is ready on the spot if he should be killed —which has not, we think, been forgotten—to forward him all he needs, and think about what he does need, such as small con- densing engines to supply absolutely pure Water, and quinine without stint ; and then to send as few orders as possible. As yet we see no reason to suppose the force too small, especially com- manded as it will be, for we do not believe in all those stories either of the heroism of the Ashantees—who are distinctly inferior to our own drilled sepoys when in mutiny, and will run away as they did — or in the difficulty of dis- ciplining native allies. They are nit going to. fight Prussian grenadiers ; they are better armed than their foes ; they will have the shells with, instead of against them ; and they will need but rough drill, and one single conviction,—that running away will be exceedingly dangerous to themselves. The demoralisation stories are stories of yesterday, not of to-morrow,—of men who could run away safely, not of men who could be punished if they ran. We do not believe in one-legged races of men, or that any moderately sized force, fully paid, fully equipped, and kindly treated, but organised on the simple Roman maxim that the soldier must dread his officer more than his enemy, can ever fail to be formidable in presence of an equal foe. The numbers in these wars matter nothing. •People in England talk about Ashantee bringing 200,000 men into the field, till they do not know what they mean, and•dream of a Sadowa, forgetting that the chief can bring-no more men to any engage- ment than he can feed ; that if his few picked troops fly, his mob will fly faster ; that Sir G. Walseley will have double or triple the force with which Clive scattered an army containing 25,000 Pathans and Rohillas—men as brave as Englishmen, and born soldiers—],l00 Frenchmen, and a limitless mob of Bengalees. The Ashantees are uglier, to be sure, but ugliness does not ensure courage ; nor will scowling faces dread our soldiers less than men with the quiet Aryan port. We do not believe that Ashantees love to be murdered as their King murders, any more than blacks do in Virginia ; and have a strong belief that we shall find in Coomassie, as everywhere else outside Europe and the United States, that the power brought against ns is a bubble requiring nothing but one sharp prick, after which we may either retire, as from Afghanistan, when reconquered by Nott and Pollock ; or by substituting a Viceroy for the native chief, gain for free black labour an immense and a peaceful field. The shell that strikes the King will unloose Ashantee. The true difficulty is transport, and this the Government is meeting by its traction-engines, which are stronger than elephants, and cost very little more ; and the true danger, the marsh mist, which cannot be rapidly improved, but can be defeated, as it extends only for ninety miles, by adequate precautions, which should be dinned into the soldiers' ears morning, noon, and night daring the voyage. Drink no unboiled water, wear flannel, never sleep on -wet ground, and the Europeans of the column may reach Coomassie without losing a hundred men. We only wish, with Hyder, they could be carried to the fight, but as that is impossible, we must trust to infinite precaution.
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