The Sun.
London, England, 1870-08-10 00:00:00

AUGUST 10, 1870.

ANOTHER DESTRUCTIVE FIRE IN BOSTON
BOSTON, July 27, 1870.

'Another destructive fire occurred in this city this fore-
noon, this time in the Highland district, on Hun-
neman-street, between Harrison Avenue and Wash-
, ington-street. The fire, it appears, caught in Joseph
Nickerson and Co.'s ropewalk, on Hunneman-street, and
from the inflammable nature of the materials used
soon spread the entire length of the walk, which ex-
tended midway between Harrison avenue and Reed-
street, and was between five and six hundred feet in
length. A considerable amount of hemp and cordage was
in this building, which was a total loss, as well as the
machinery, the fire spreading so rapidly that it was with
great difficulty some of the -operatives (twelve or fifteen
in number) could escape with their lives. The fire com-
municated to adjoining
.houses which added to the con-
flagration and caused the fire to spread to the
stone cordage factory of the same firm, situated
on the south side of Hunneman-street. In
the upper storey of the factory was stored a large
amount of Manilla and other hemp and cordage, which
took fire and burned with such fury as to defy the efforts
of the firemen to put kit out before burning through the
roof. It was, however, mastered after a time without
penetrating to the lower storey, where most of the expen-
sive machinery was, which will only be damaged by
water. The damage to the Nickerson Company
is 70,000 dollars, and the insurance 32,750 dollars.
If it were not for the intervention of this stone factory it
is probable the fire would have swept south and west
through the wooden house district in that direction.
Three blocks of tenement houses of the aggregate value
of $lO,OOO were also destroyed. They were occupied by
twenty-seven families, all of whom were rendered home-
less, and many lost their entire household possessions.
Two of the tenement blocks were owned by Dennis
Mullane, and the other by William Curley. A woman,
helplessly sick with consumption, in one of the burning
buildings, was rescued by her husband at the imminent
peril of his own life.

•
THE GERMAN-AMERICAN MOVEMENT.
The movement among the German-Americans in favour
of sharing the efforts of their trans-Atlantic brethren to
have the wounded soldiers of Germany and widows and
orphans well taken care of, has now extended over the
whole of the United States. Large mass meetings have
been reported from the States of New York, New Jersey,
Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri,
and Maryland; and the majority of the other States,
though we do not remember having seen reports of mass
meetings, have probably shown an equal amount of in-
terest in the cause of their common fatherland. Never
before has there been a movement of such extent among
our German population. It is very gratifying to learn
from all quarters that the leaders in the movement, with
great earnestness, insist on the absolute necessity of obey-
ing in every respect the laws of the United States. From
the large cities as centres the movement spreads rapidly
to the small towns and villages. Like the German
newspapers, the mass of the population appears to
be remarkably unanimous • the greater or less success
depending chiefly on the circumstance whether a
town or a district has men of organsiing skill.
The Executive Committee of the City displays
remarkable activity. A Committee of correspondence,
consisting of Professor Schem, Dr. Hoist. Mr. Otten-
dorffer' General Sigel, and ex-Governor Salomon, has been
instructed'on the one hand to make a thorough canvass
of the State of New York, and to urge the holding of
meetings and the establishment of branch Patriotic Aid
Societies in every place which has a German population,
and, on the other hand, to confer with the societies of
other States as to the propriety of placing this whole re-
markable movement under one central direction, and of
making it thus the more influential and effective. The
Committee have on that account issueda circular, inviting
all the German Patriotic Aid Societies of the country to
meet in National Convention at Chicago on the 18th of
August. It has been proposed in some quarters to send
over a prominent German-American to Germany to look
personally after a faithful execution of all the intentions
of the American society. General Sigel, who enjoys a
€122-5-8 Y Alai d Viiiitifekinc4terlilEtebeiliiPu'l!itkihßUPlEd.-
cept such a position, and he is reported to have expressed
a readiness to undertake the mission. The Stoats Zeitung
of this City declares in favour of the proposition, but
thinks that so important a mission should not be con-
ferred by one single city, but only by a National Conven-
tion.—New. York Tribune.

SCIEN ITIFIC CHANGES IN THE ART OF
WAR.

The war of the giants has indeed come; but many of'its
blows kill be struck at ranges and from distances no less
enormous than the physical power of the antagonists.
Although the days of chivalry may not be really and for
ever past and gone, the gallant hand-to-hand encounters,
the battle-axe ,of Coeur de Lion, the scimetar of Saladin,
the lance of Bayard, and the claymore of the time of Bruce
and Wallace, are as much out of date as the rude war clubs
of the ancient Picts and Britons. The wild Scythian
would not have been more misplaced with his skin mantle
and bow and arrows in the presence of such armies as the
first Napoleon led to the field than
" The whiskered Pandours and the fierce hussars "
of Europe will become ere long under the modifications of
warfare that are now inevitable. Everyone, upon care-
fully reading the details of Sadowa, where the fearful
Prussian Zundnadelgewehr mowed down the almost help-
less Austrians in swaths of dead and mangled men, felt
convinced that a new era in the science and method of
destruction had already opened. But in that bloody
engagement the finest breechloaders were met by the old
Austrian regulation musket and rifle. At Mentana, however.
fought soon after, the French and Papal troops
killed and wounded eight hundred out of the
G-aribaldian force of not much more than
three thousand, in a very little while, and the
Chassepot loomed up as the rival, some think even the
superior, of the Prussian gun. But now these two ter-
rible weapons are to be opposed to each other, and it is
clear as noonday that the old evolutions and operations
in the face of an enemy will have to be so greatly modi-
fied as almost to disappear. At Sadowa the victorious
Prussian closed in without much difficulty upon the Aus-
trian struggling vainly with his ineffective weapon ; but
with the fearful French mitrailleuse hurling literally con-
tinuous jets of bullets, and the field artillery necessarily
playing at "long taw" with rifled guns, and pitching shot
with perfect precision for two and three miles, while the
sharpshooter " spots," not his 'man, but his dozen of
men, at nearly one mile distance, we shall have no
more Murat or Balaklava charges of cavalry up to the
mouths of the batteries, no more Redan and Malakoff
escalades. Cavalry, excepting for scouting, foraging and
some minor outside operations, will become almost obso-
lete, and even the bayonet, so long the chief safeguard of
the soldier, will cease to be much more than a mere orna-
mental and sometimes very embarassing appendage. Such
is the teaching of the latest and best experience, and such
the conviction of the best informed authoritieS. The seven
inch steel gun invented by Lynall Thomas is reported by
General Lefroy in his " Handbook of Artillery to have
thrown a 1751 b. projectile 10,076 yards, the, longest range,
it is said, ever known previous to the Whit Worth and our
own great American guns, which threw very inuehfarther.
It is plain enough, then, that with such fearful enginery
at work, the war is to be waged between antagonists like
the French and the Prussians chiefly at long distances,
and that steam on the railroads and the seas and rivers,
the hidden telegraph.and torpedo under ground and under
water, and a dozen new appliances of electricity
and fulminants will play a part never before
assigned to them. We shall no doubt have steel-clad
locomotive batteries swiftly approaching and receding in
the rear of an attacking force, and nitro-glycerine and
steam will both be applied in the construction as well
as in the demolition of the numberless fortifications and
field-works that will be incessantly thrown up. The
occult powers of science will be brought more and more
into play for the production of propulsive and explosive
agencies ; and if the whispers that pass from lip to, lip
in the military laboratory be true, the French are about
to be made acquainted with something quite as novel and
far more destructive than any fulminating compound,
rifled ,cannon or breech-loading, repeating. fire-
arm yet devised. Chemistry' and civil engineering are
likely to go hand in hand in this war with appalling effect.
Thus each step onward leads to a fresh range of discovery
in war as in ail other exercises of human skill and daring,
and, with the view that the latest fulminants and weapons
open to us, we think that we can perceive, at no great
distance in the vista of coming years, the auspicious day
when the very impossibility of war in any other sense
than as wholesale, brutal massacre, according to success-
ful manciuvring for position on one side or the other, will
disband the standing armies that tempt ambition, and
prepare the way for that " truce of God " that is to give
• the nations rest. —New 'York herald:

Four hundred men from the Plymouth division of;
the Royal Marines have been ordered to Japan. They
will sail in the Indian troopship Tamar, which is now at
Devonport.
LORD TENTERDEN.—A correspondent of the Man-
chester Guardian, writes :—lt is said that the vacancy
recently caused in the Foreign Office by the death of the
Hon. Charles Spring Rice is, about to be filled up by the
appointment of Lord Tenterden. The office is that of
Permanent Assistant Under Secretary, and it is
one of the most desirable in the administrative
staff. His Lordship has only recently inherited
" the title from his uncle, and as he takes with it
no great fortune,, he is naturally desirous of remaining
in the public service. But his position being, in point of
departmental standing, junior to eight or nine other clerks,
albof competent ability and character, the • preference
shewn him is likely to to give rise to much complaint. As
Mr. Abbott he entered the Foreign Office in 1854, and not
long ago he discharged the functions of precis writer to
Lord Stanley,