The Sun.
London, England, 1867-08-14 00:00:00

Civilised Warfare in Savage Lands.

The reputation of a famous General is in jeopardy
when in command of an expedition to subdue war-
like tribes of widely scattered savages. It matters
not how high his ability, how just his renown ; he
may outlive the detraction but as he is pretty sure
to fail, the first effect is to injure his prestige. The
reason is that those judge him who cannot un-
derstand the position. People smarting under
disappointment, and annoyed at the display of
their own impotence in the presence of a cruel and
contemptible enemy, feel angry at the heavy
drain on their purses. A nation likes to have
a result for a huge expenditure, and dislikes a
display of its own powerlessness to accomplish what
is regarded as an almost paltry end. Although the
United States is far more just than England to its
commanders, appreciating more truly and making
more general allowance for their difficulties, yet it
is almost impossible for a Democracy carrying on
such a war to be really fair. Easy as it may ap-
pear to the Britisher or Yankee to comprehend the
situation of civilised men in a waste without
an atom of civilisation, yet unless travel has
brought him into such localities, or that he is

gifted with a keen imagination, he will fail in
appreciating it. Therefore, with few excep-
tions, the critics are unqualified to discuss the
subject. After dwelling long in large cities, men
become so accustomed to all their conveniences as to
be unable to realise their helplessness if deprived of
these advantages. The facts are criticised as they
occur, but material items are omitted which neutralise
the General's advantages, and turn the very weakness
of the enemy into the most embarrassing strength.
The number of that enemy is accurately ascertained
and stated, the command of the General is fully
detailed ; the one is pitted against the other, and
the conclusion cannot but be favourable to their
own side. On the one hand there are 10,000 or 20,000
highly trained and well armed soldiers backed by
the power of a mighty nation ; on the other, per-
haps, a smaller body of untutored savages badly
armed and ill supplied with the munitions of
war. Comparing man with man their own soldiers
are superior. The country is as open to the one as
to the other. If the savages can move about and
exist, why not the soldiers ? but the scalp of every
Red Man costs a fortune and the lives of ten white
men. The argument deduced from such premises is
against the conduct of the war, yet the superior skill
of the commanding General defeated an enemy equal
to himself in all that makes campaigns formidable !
The nation frets and grieves over the accounts of
losses by ambuscade, by positive defeats of detached
parties, by murders of travellers, by sickness, by
disasters in fording rivers, &c., and these are the only
apparent results of an enormous expenditure. The
General finds himself almost as helpless as would
be the commander of a formidable battery erected
to destroy a fleet, if, instead of the fleet,
nothing but a few mischievous row boats ap-
pear. It is in vain for him to discharge
his immense projectiles, which, hurled through
the air, skip and flash in the water as they tear
along harmlessly on a course that would be truly
formidable to anything interrupting their progress.
The powerful battery is impotent, and its force
wasted in the presence of so contemptible a foe. So
it is with organised brigades when operating in
wilds where there exist no points of attack. The
General's difficulty is that he has positively nothing
in his front, no object on which to concentrate his
efforts. lle might as well be in pursuit of a set of
jackalls, and he would have a chance against beavers.
If the United States determined on the destruction of
the prairie buffalo these noble beasts might easily
be exterminated. But to destroy the Red Men or
the wolves is a task of enormous difficulty. It is
not that the wolves or Red Men are individually
formidable, but they are next to impossible to get
at. The whole system of war is based on the sup-
position that man is a civilised being, who accumu-
lates property, dwells in houses, which, when
grouped into cities, are points that must be de-
fended. There are the women and children, the
machinery of his government; the fixed positions
which cannot be moved and must be defended. If
man reverts to the state of jackalls his civilised
brethren are positively helpless in presence of the des-
picable savage. The very strength of the savage lies
in what to a civilised army would be a most dan-
gerous weakness—he is operating in tho air with-
out any base. A General is compelled to build up
an advance as an architect builds up a house,
securing storey by storey till he reaches the height
ainael at. If the base be insecure the whole is
liable to tumble down in ruin, and the higher he
gets the weaker becomes the structure. If the
General erects this costly edifice, and secures no re-
sult, the people who pay for the building naturally
object. But he is comp.:llcl thus to operate, br
he cannot isolate himself in the wilds of nature,
where there arc absolutely no means of living with-
out keeping open his communications. If his opera-
tions be conducted in a cultivated land the c )untry
supplies him with fool, but his difficulties in the
Territory of the Red Indians is immeasurably in-
creased by the fact that not only is he unable to
place his hand on the foe, but he is unable to feed
his cumbrous force unless sustained by au enormous
effort of his Government. It is in vain for General
SHERMAN to rub noses with General HANCOCI" •
,they
cannot alter the circumstancs. however formid-
able they might be in Canada or Mexico, they are
helpless in Western Kansas, iu Arizona, in Colorado
—and experience will teach them what it has taught
the colonists of New Zealand that they will have to
bid for the scalps of their enemies, employing the
hunters and trappers and other wild spirits of the
Far West who detest Indians with a deadly hatred,
and who would freely risk their seal, s if they could