The Sun.
London, England, 1870-08-20 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1870.

MARSHAL BAZAINE makes it a rule not to divulge
any of his movements until some time after they
have taken place, for fear of informing the enemy.
To this practice it is not for outsiders to take excep-
tion; but one trifle of information could hardly do any
harm at present, and it would immensely relieve the
mind of the anxious French nation. He should just
inform the world where' he is. This knowledge,
under some circumstances, might be useful to the
enemy ; but it is quite certain that, in this case, the
Germans are fully acquainted with his where-
abouts, whereas Paris is suffering extreme agony
because she does not know. The Germans claim to
have cut off the retreat of BAZAINE'S army from
Metz to Verdun, and to have driven it back into the
former town. BAZAINE says his army, after the ter-
rible fight of Tuesday, encamped on the positions
they had conquered. Where were those positions?
The commander-in-chief does not tell us. Surely he
cannot have been, as the Germans say, driven back
into Metz. Such a retreat could not be atoned
for by any extent of triumph in actual
fight. If Marshal BAZAINE has been com-
pelled to fall back upon Metz, all is
lost; the war must immediately be ended. Even if the
Germans have fairly planted themselves between
Metz and the line of retreat, the situation
of the Imperial forces must be next to
hopeless. Divided into two parts and separated
by many miles, with the whole German host
intervening, there would remain nothing for the
French corps but defeat or surrender in detail. in
fact, whilst the Marshal is claiming a victory,
every impartial on-looker is wondering and
doubting whether the beleaguered army has not
sustained a hopeless strategical reverse. If BAZAINE
will tell us where he is, that news will go far to clear
up.this difficulty. He has told the French people a
tale of triumph, but actually omitted to say where
the conquerors spent the night after victory.

THE appalling character of the war now raging in
Lorraine beggars description. Armies ranging from
150,000 to 250,000 men contending separately with
each other thirteen hours consecutively, from eight
o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock in the
evening—armed on the one side with the
needle-gun and the gatling ordnance, on the
other with the chassepot and the mitrailleuse—
cause a destruction of human life and mutilation
of the wounded, a variety of horror and an amount
of agony beyond all precedent in the world's former
experiences of war. It is the realisation at last of
what has long been anticipated. With this disad-
vantage, however, that there would seem to be small
prospect of the early arrival of the time, so often of
late years looked forward to, when the weapons of
battle should become so fearful in their destructiveness
that the nations of the world would by mutual consent
abolish, for once and for all, the supreme arbitrament
of war—referring their quarrels thenceforth, that
s, from the advent of that halcyon day, to peace-
ful arbitration. The implements of destruc-
tion have become more and more terrible in their
character, but there seems no more prosper;
that war will be foregone by kings or peoples
than there was in the remote past, when arrows
were shot from the yew bow, or stones hurled by the
sling or the catapult. Again, it has often been
argued that, with the perfecting of these modern
arms of precision, there would, at any rate follow,
almost by necessity, this consolatory result—
that campaigns would be brief, and victory
speedily gained on the one side or the other. As a
startling comment upon this must illusory anticipa-
tion, the very war which has recently brought France
and Prussia into deadly collision was announced as
likely to be a long one in the Emperor NAPOLEON'S
proclamation. A. single battle, as we have just now
seen, to our horror, can last through thirteen hours
altogether, although the belligerents are armed with
instruments of war of the most fearfully destructive
character well conceivable. The realisation of the.
horrors of these terrible conflicts, the personal
realisation of them by the individual rulers, of men
at the potent beck of whose finger they are called
into existence, it has often erroneously been sup-
posed would tend to secure the world from their
repetition or recurrence. So entirely futile has been
this fair promise that, strange to say, it has been
related both of the King of PRUSSIA and of the EM-
PEROR of the FRENCH that, after riding over a
battle-field the former in 1866, during the
campaign closed at Sadowa, the latter in
1859, in the campaign closed at Solferino—
each was so awe-stricken by the horror of the spec-
tacle then immediately brought under his observation,
that both EMPEROR and KING declared they would
have none of it in the future, that they would do
their very uttermost to prevent the possibility
of such deadly- miseries being again created
and multiplied. Yet, in spite of that bitter
lesson, here are these very two men, at the
head of gigantic forces armed to the teeth, and deal-
ing destruction upon one another with all the re
sources of the formidable sciences applied to the per-
fecting of the implethents and missiles of
modern warfare ! War is sharper, but it
is not shorter, as the world comforted itself
by hoping it would prove to be. It is only
more and more destructive, terrible, pitiless, and
desolating in its Character. Further than ever, would
we seem to be, from the halcyon epoch when the
swords are to be beaten into ploughshares, and the

spears into reaping hooks. Instead of that the metal
is only welded into' deadlier shapes than ever, into
rifled cannons and breech-loaders, into the needle-
gun and the chassepot, into the gatling and the
mitrailleu se.

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