The Sun.
London, England, 1854-10-20 00:00:00

THE HORRORS OF WAR.

The further particulars that have reached us of the
Battle of the Alma, the march across the promontory,
and the operations of Balaklava, will be read with in-
terest even by those whose attention is fixed on the
walls of Sebastopol. The details will pain and they will
amuse, but, beside these conflicting impression?, if we
mistake not, they will excite another, and that is a sort
of surprise. The narrative is, indeed, as strange and as
full of incident as the story of any war we ever read,
however dressed up by historians or novelists. But
there is one illusion which the columns before us utterly
dispet. Of late years there has been a growing belief
that, should war unhappily return,—and even that
was doubted,— it would not visit us in tie rude guise
under which it has ever been known to our ancestors.
There e as so much progress and improvement in every-
thing, in the science of war, in the comforts of the sol-
dier, in all kinds of mechanical inventions, in the mutual
courtesy of nations, and everything else, that people
fancied battles would be fought as cleanly and as
smoothly as a game of chess or a sham fig-ht on Wool-
wich common. The only difficulty was to sec how war
would be decided in future. Some thought it would be
an affair of tactics, others that it would be a question of
rifles, and there have not been wanting- those who feared
that in the universal diffusion of science and manufac-
tures the hardy habits of the less civilised nation might
turn the scale against those bred in comparative comfort
and ease. These speculations are disposed of for the
present. War has reappeared—war between civilised,
scientific, mechanical nations— between States that have
immense war establishments, national debts, and all the
rest of it. And war turns out to be just the Fame
as ever—the same uncouth, disagreeable, savage, in-
human thing, that it ever was since the beginning of
history. It is still reckless, malicious, wanton, andabsolutely envious of happiness and peace ; it still'
produces the most miserable scenes, the wildest
adventures, the most perilous situation, the most
horrid calamities, and those large masses of misery that
men had thought too vast and too hideous for these
snug and quiet tmes. We knew what the expedition
to the Crimea was to be—we know what it has been so
far, if, indeed, we do know the worst. Putting aside
the question of substantial success and the glory that
attends it, and looking only to the manner and circumstance
of the affair, what a difference between the anticipation
and the fact ! Quantum, mutatus ab illo Rectore I we
may say. How splendid the warrior as he buckled on
his harness ! How gory, how dusty, how pallid he re-
turns from the fight!
Not to go further back, take the expedition as it
arrives off the coast of the Crimea. The soldiers
and sailors are falling by scores under the stroke
of an inscrutable pest. The army lands, and, after
all our rehearsals at Chobham, it bivouacs in the mud
and in rain. For several days it suffers an actual
plague of thirst. Then comes the march, on the very
first, day of which baggage is sacrificed and the rear is
left bet-ind. At last comes the battle, tardy to those
who had expected it, though only the beginning of the
end. It is no paper fight. The carnage, confusion,
feats of daring, the collision of thousands with thousands,
the medley of the victors and the vanquished are those
of the old battles. Then, after a night of triumph and
horrid suffering, the sun rises on thousands groaning,
writhing, and in worse agonies of thirst, over the bloody
field. The writer, himself wracked with fever, describes
the melancholy burying of the dead, and the slow pro-
cession of the wounded, borne on the shoulders of the
survivors, or the rude carts of ,the country, to the dis-
tant shore. One by one they die on the field, on the
journey, on the beach, in the boats, on board the float-
ing hospitals. They that escaped the battle, and were
its most conspicuous heroes, do not escape the pest.
One by one they, too, fall. The march is renewed in
the doubtful morning twilight. On the one side is heard
the solemn hymn of triumph, raised by the victors from
the heights they had gained, and on the other side,
stretched over the field, is seen a dark mass, half living,
half dead. They are the Russian wounded left behind,
and in the midst of them, like " the last man," a solitary
surgeon, left to do what he could with that world of
misery, his only hope of success, and 'even of his own
life, being the chance that his' mission would be under-
stood and recognised by the rude enemy certain Kiel to
surround him. Follow the advancing columns. Few
comforts and little rest have they gained by their victory.
They suffer in rapid succession the burning sun, the
nightly chill, and the morning dew. They enter vil-
lages and find desolation, for the Cossacks have been
before them. What is spared they lay waste them-
selves, as it were, in rivalry. Surprised to find
splendid mansions, furnished with every elegance and
luxury, in a country which they had heard was ri
pestilential desert, they admire and destroy. Weary
and thirsty, they rush into gardens, orcl.ards, and vine-
yards, and devour till they sicken and die. The scene
in which Englishmen act this part is just such as we
should witness if cur enemies should find themselves in
the suburbs of this metropolis. In this mirror we see
what we should have to endure. But to proceed. In
this well-appointed army we have a day's work of seven-
teen hours, a night march in which whole regiments lost
their way. Even in the day a portion of the army finds
itself almost within the fire of Sebastopol, and the Com-
mander-in-Chief with his staff comes suddenly on a
numerous Russian division, which, fancying itself sur-
prised, flies, and is routed with slaughter and loss of bag-
gage. Then the scene changes to the quiet landlocked
bay, or "mountain tarn" of Balaklava, filled with huge
ships, got there no one knows how, delivering ponde-
rous cannon and mountains of shot. But still the pur-
suing, indefatigable pest. It attacks new regiments,
and does not cease the work of death in the pauses of
the campaign.
Has war changed its character ? There is not a cir-
cumstance in these narratives that is not common to all
wars, arid, unfortunately, all that we read of in our
youth, when wars had ceased through all the world, re-
appears with sad fidelity. It is impossible to restrain
the license of soldiery, especially when the foe himself
sets the example of destruction. Yet this last is un-
avoidable, for self-preservation compels a retreating
army to leave a desert behind it. A desert it does leave.
Germany has not even yet recovered from the effects of
the Thirty Years' War and the armies that have passed
over the land. War is not a gamsi, nor yet is it like the
cheap and easy vengeance of the wealthy against the
poor, or the many against the few. It is a work of risk.
One thing alone is certain about it, and that is a com-
munity of danger and hardship. The officer and the
private are alike exposed to the bullet and the pest ; and
happily for us, if war is in all respects unchanged, so
also is that courage and endurance, both of officer and
soldier, which have won for us so many triumphs, and
on which and on our good cause we may still trust-
hilly rely.— Times.

A NEW RAILWAY.—A preliminary survey has been
made, with a view of fixing upon the most eligible course
to be taken for a new railway to Finchley, which will
open out the country to the north of .Highgate for the
purpose of building residences for persons engages in
business in town. It is proposed that the line shall
commence at the Highbury station of the North Lon-
don Railway, and proceed in a western direction till iti
t
approaches the back of the Model Prison, it
turn to the right, and proceed along the back of the
Holloway-road till it reaches Highgate, when it will
pass underneath the hill by a tunnel near to the junction
of Maiden-lane and Yornsey-lane, and proceed on to
Finchley, where it will terminate in the first instance
near to the Bald Faced Stag, but it is intended ulti-
mately to continue it further.
TEE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL CoMP.AII7. —This
Company have now four steamers engaged on
Peninsular line, four en the Southampton and Alexan-
drian line, two on the Marseilles and Malta line, six on
the Calcutta and Suez line, seven on the Bombay and
China line, four on the Calcutta and China line, two on
the Singapore and Australian line, four on the China
local service, two building, seven store and coal ships,
and five engaged in the Government transport service to
and from the Crimea. The Himalaya is still enumerated
in the published lists of the company's ships, but it is
stateda jestiyn,sthose company's lists that she has been purchased by her
Government. Thepaddle-wheel
steamer lia,ddington has been
ship, and the paddle-wheel steamer Sultan in
isn to a
being sailingc on-
h verted ipto a screw steamer.

It may not be uninteresting to state how the crew of
this vessel is Composed. In the first place, the captain
is a German gentleman of great affluence, and has been
35 years in the service, for, besides serving on the seas,
he is colonel' in the Austrian army on land, and wears
two crosses, showing that he has done seine service for
his country. The crew is composed of an equal number
of Austrians, Italians, and Illyrians. The system em-
ployed in selecting them in that country is by lot, with-
out distinction to rank or fortune, so that the present
ship's company consists of—even tne common sailors—
members of families of high distinction. Those who are
drawn for tare obliged to continue for four years in
continuethe s ervi caes,
volunteersae w hic
same in the are
service.aloed to
The r eu
effectri or
f
this is that although a strict discipline is maintained
among the crew and officers, the most friendly feeling
exists between both.
The vessel is fitted up with all the recent improve-
ments, 'and the engines were manufactured by Messrs.
Maudslay, of Lambeth. The cabins and saloons of the
vessel are most gorgeously fitted up and appointed, and
are, in point of elegance, equal to any ship that has ever
left the port of London.
It having been ordered that a set of the petent fire-
annihilating machine's should be placed in the ship incase
of the outbreak of fire during the voyage, it appears a
private trial of the machines took place at Erith previous
to the vessel taking her departure, principally for in-
structing the crew in applying the machines in case of
an accident by fire occurring. The trial took place in
the experimental grounds of the Annihilator Company,
near the railway station. A tank, 50 feet long and 5
feet wide, was filled with tar and in the presence of
Captain Schmidt, two of his officers, and 12 of the crew,
the whole of the inflammable contents of the tank was
set on fire. Eor a second or AO, nothing but one im-
mense volume of black smoke could be seen, which
shoWed that no small body cf fire was bane:eh. In less
than a minute a huge sheet of flame rose through the
smoke .considerably higher than any housetop the
neighbourhood, whica appeared to astonish the 'Captain:
and all who belonged to his ship, and every one appeared
t') doubt that the machines, however powerful, would be
able to subdue so vast a body of fire. The firemen bee
bilging to the Annihilator Company went forward with
a single machine, and instantaneously discharged the
vapour upon the flames, and at once extinguished them.
The tar was relighted. when the flame rose as high as
before, when two machines were used, handled by one
of the sailors and an eugeneer, under the direction of
Vie company's men, and the flame was quickly subdued.
The fire was lighted a third lime, and the crew of the
ship, by means of a single machine, extinguished the
flames in as brief a space as on the first occasion.
At the conclusion Of the experiments, Capt. Schmidt
expressed to Mr. Curti:, the secretary of the company,
his cheeks for the trouble he had taken, and in conclu-
sion remarked that he should never fear having the com-
mend oF any vessel at sea, even if on fire, with such
powerful appliances at hand.