The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-17 00:00:00

THE FALr, OF KARS.

(From the Times )

Capable of being roused to the most sublime fights of
heroism, and of performing the most daring acts of de-
votion—capable of compensating the want of numbers by
and the want of skill by desperate and unflinching
courage—man is, after all, a macLiae, and a machine
',either of the most durable nor serviceable description.
Withhold from him but a sufficient amount of that
nourishment which he requires in common with the
dullest and meanest of the animal creation, and the arm
who bad faced unmoved death in a hundred of its most
terrible shapes must yield for want of a few grains of
rice to allay his hunger, or a cup of water to quench
his thirst, The admiration of all Europe had been so
vividly excited at the wonderful defence of Kara—at the
almost superhuman valour which hurled back, for seven
hours of incessant attack, in hopeless rout and with in-
credible slaughter, a brave and well-disciplined enemy—
that we seem to have forgotten that the men who accom-
plished these prodigies were mortal and destructible like
ourselves. The poet complains that by the side of his
mistress he forgot that she could die, and the garrison
of Kars may with some reason lament that, dazzled
by the brilliancy of their exploits, those whose duty it
was to support and to relieve them forgot that they
could not exist %About food. We know not yet in de-
tail, but we may well conceive for ourselves, what must
have been the feelings of that heroic band when, after
the first tumultuous joy of an almost incredible success
had ebbed away, they began to perceive that all this
gallant blood had flowed in vain, and that those whom
they had just repelled in headlong confusion from their
beleaguered outworks bad enlisted on their side an ally
more formidable than infantry or artillery—the gaunt
spectre Famine, whose approaches no sortie can arrest,
no bravery resist, no skill countermine. The rapid and
destructive effects of modern artillery, as compared with
the slow and imperfect means of attack possessed by the
ancients, have rendered the reduction of fortified places
by famine a much less frequent incident in modern than
in ancient warfare. The genius of Cervantes has com-
memorated in a noble tragedy the fall of Numantia,
under the arms of Scipio Africanus, and described with
painful minuteness and reality the gradual triumph of
hunger over valour, discipline, and patriotism ; and we
this day receive from the graphic pen of Mr. Macaulay
the narrative of the siege of Londonderry, signalised,
like that of Kars, by the pressure of sickness and
famine, but sadly differing in the final catastrophe.
It is as yet only from narratives like these that we
can imagine what has been done and suffered in that
long and grievous agony of eight weeks which has
vanquished the victors, and turned the scene of their
triumph into that of their captivity. There is a desire in
human nature to pry into and gauge its utmost suffer-
ings, and to place oneself in the situation of those who
have undergone the last extremities of misery. For such
efforts of the representative faculty the siege of Kars
affords scanty but yet sufficient materials. We know
that, even in the midst of their successes they'were de-
cimated by cholera, and we may well conceive the ex-
pedients to which they must have been reduced when we
read that many days before the capitulation all the horses
but one had died of hunger. The Turkish troops are
peculiarly capable of enduring privation, and were in
tsis instance stimulated to the utmost abstinence that
human nature can endure by the knowledge that if they
could only hold out a little longer the intolerable oold
of winter in that elevated region-8,000 feet above the
level of the sea—must necessarily relieve them from the
blockade. It was, indeed, a race between cold and fa-
mine, the Russians relying on starving the garrison into
submission before they were frozen into retreat, and the
Turks hoping that winter might intervene to save then
from a fate to which their countrymen and their allies
had listlessly resigned them. The advance of Omer Pa-
sha also must have inspired hopes of a diversion, and in-
duced the garrison to exert the utmost endurance, when
a single day sooner or later might make all the difference
between liberty and captivity, between victory and defeat.
If we are to measurethe passive courage of the defenders of
Kars by their active bravery, we can have no doubt that
such men, so excited, underwent all, and more than all,
that the physical structure of man enables him to under-
go. We do not yet know what were the obstacles
which checked the advance of the Turks upon Kars, and
whether they consisted in anything more than that en-
pineness and timidity of the Generals of which we have
had such frequent experience. But we may well ask
why the brave General Williams, after creating out of
the most hopeless materials and under the most adverse
conditions a force of which we may at any rate say that
it has accomplished a feat of arms second to none that
has been achieved in the course of this war, was left to
perish, unaided and uncared for, while there were so

many thousands of his countrymen on the neighbouring
shores .of the Crimea ? Possibly an attempt by a de-
tachment of the English army to relieve Kars would
have been unsuccessful, but surely we have a right to
ask why no pains were taken even to ascertain the pose
sibility of such an undertaking? Does any one believe
that, without General Williams and his brave com-
panions in arms, the Turks would ever have succeeded
in the defence of the 29th of September Who can
say that if the detachment at Erzeroum had been
similarly led—still more, had it been strengthened by a
small contingent of English soldiers—the attempt to
relieve the place would have been abandoned as hope.
less and impracticable ? Had Omer Pasha been bei
sieged in Kars and General Williams been at the
head of a relieving force, does any one doubt that the
attempt, at any rate, would have been made, that the
garrison would not have been abandoned, without
struggle, to the pangs of hunger and the miseries
captivity? It were better to have risked much than
have .bandoned this glorious band to a fate so un
worthy and deplorable. There is no more gallant Eng-
lishman living than General Williams—no one who, in
the course of this war, has performed services of equal
magnitude ; and good reason ought to be given why
such a leader, such efficers, and such an army have been
left to their fate.
We are not disposed to underrate the merits or the
success of the Russian General. Of the desperate cou-
rage of the attack on the 29th of September the fright-
ful loss sustained is sufficient evidence, as it is also
evidence of the little hope that General Mouravieff then
had that he would be permitted to prolong his blockade
without interruption. Si ca then be has persevered
with great endurance and against enormous difficulties,
and has gained the success due alike to his patience and
our supineness. He has conferred on his master a
signal benefit, and given to him something to set off
against the uniform course of defeat which has attended
the arms of Russia from the first conflict at Oltenitza to
the passage of the Ingour. Russia has now something to
put against Sebastopol, and, if the conquest be infi-
nitely smaller and won by less glorious means,
it is at any rate complete. The Russian garrison
withdrew unmolested across the harbour of Sebastopol,
but the whole garrison of Kars, nine Pashas, and, above
all, General Williams and his officers, the life and spirit
of the whole remain prisoners in the hands of the con-
queror. War is, at best, a checkered game, and we must
not duly repine at reverses ; but there is nothing so bard
to bear with patience as a loss which, according to all
appearances, spirit and foresight far less than those dis-
played in the defence of the place would have been suf•
ficient to avert.

SUB-IRRIGATION WITH LIQUID

MANURE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE BUN.

SlR,—As every true application of liquid manure to
the production of large and healthy crop., by easy pro•
eesses, is of great value towards producing that convic-
tion in the minds of the ratepayers of the metropolis
which is to lead them to utilise their sewage waters in•
stead of poisoning therewith the waters of the Thames
and the atmosphere of their habi►ations, I beg to call at-
tention to the sub-irrigation carried on by Mr. Wilkins,
near Reading station, for the last three seasons.
In July last I visited the gardens, and was much
pleased with the extremely healthy and regular crops
then growing. A very fine parcel of hemp was 6i feel
long, and nut at maturity. This was grown in eleven
weeks of dry weather. Flax was equally forward.
Mangold-wurtzel, peas, beans, potatoes, carrots, ccb•
bage, rhubarb, all looked in the most prosperous condi•
tion—hops especially so.
Last year the produce, as shown at the London Ta-
vern, was most wonderful, and now it will not be less so:
All this is the result of manuring on a correct anti
natural principle ; and as a company is to be formed to
carry it out on a large scale, it is desirable that every
one who takes an interest in such things should see the
crops on the land. It is proposed to set apart a portion
of the lands or profits of the company for the benefit of
the orphans of soldiers lost in the war.

In J uly I saw potatoes dug out of sawdust and sand,
sub-irrigated, and they were equal to the beet of any'
crop.

The Duke of Wellington and Mr. Commissioner Fane,
and many others, have since visited the grounds, and
admitted the produce to be excellent, and far superior to
the ordinary method.
Martin Doyle, the famous writer on small farms, also
inspected the crops last year, and in his book on small
farms, and also in the " Family Economist," has re'
ported the facts and his impressions in his usual lively
manner, but with solid truthfulness.
I am the more anxious that this subject should be
actively investigated, as I see in it the means of not only
improving our waste lands and waste populations, but of
freeing our towns from waste drainage, without creating
any bad vapours from irrigating meadows on the surface,
as at some planes has been done through wasteful ignai
ran ce I
It was reported some years ago that the whole of
Westminster, proper, could be drained with pipes, and
the am
, at an expense of
25,0 sewagea ca n
dirfr ithised backcould tob
eFuh
realised
l for any part of the
metropolis admitting of free access to the country, what
a gain it would be compared to the mighty intercepting
sewers and tidal waste of sewage now talked of.
There can be no question that the wisest and best
method for the ratepayers is to expend their money so as
it way enable others to use the sewage for profitable put'
poses, and to avail themselves of all suggestions tending
thereto. W. W.

An order has been issued from the War•office that
those men who volunteered from the Provisional 13a.
taboo as orderlies in the hospital at Smyrna, being n°
longer required, will return to their duty at the Chathata
station.

Orders have been received at the head-quarters of the
Royal Engineers at Woolwich to have a company read/
to proceed to Aldershott, to be employed under th•
command of General Sir F. Smith, K.H. The 26th
company of the same corps, under the command of Car
tain Walker, will proceed to Chatham on Monday to be
instructed in field-works, &c.