The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1870-07-28


sense Of public proprlety by an outrage in tn,
very seat Of justice does seem to cali for thu
strongest hand Of the law.
Scientific Changes In tho Art OF War.
The war of the giants has indeed come
but many Of It's blows will 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
forever past and gone, the gallant hand-to-
hand encounters, the battle-axe of Ceur 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and Wallace, are as much out Of date as the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 modi-
fcations Of warfare that are now inevitable.
Every one, upon carefully reading the de-
tails Of Sadowa, where the fearful Prussian
acknowledgement moved down the almost
helpless Austrians in swaths of dead and
mangled men, felt convinced that a new
era in the science and method of de-
structiou had already opened. But in
that bloody engagement the finest breech-
leaders were met by the old Austrian regula-
ton musket and rifle. At Montana, however
fought soon after, the French and Papal troops
killed and wounded eight hundred out of the
Garibaldiau force of not much more than three
thousand, in a very little while, and the Chas-
sepot doomed up as the rival, some think even
the superior, Of the Prussian gun. But now
these two terrible weapons are TO be opposed
to each other, and 1t Is clear as MONDAY that
the old evolutions and operations In the face
Of an enemy will have to be so greatly modi-
fed as almost to disappear. At Sadowa the
victorious Prussian closed in without much
difficulty upon the Austrian struggling vainly
with his Ineffective weapon but with the fear
full French mitrGiNsuse hurting literally con-
tinuous jets of bullets, and the field artillery
necessarily playing at 'long taw" with rifed
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 bat
teries, no more Redan and Malakoff
escalades. Cavalry, excepting for scouting,
foraging and some minor outside operations,
will become almost obsolete, aud even the
bayonet, so long the chief safeguard of the
soldier, will cease to be much more than q
mere ornamental and sometimes very embar-
RAISING appendage. Such is the teaching
of the latest and best experience, and such
the conviction of the best informed authori-
ties.
The seven inch steel gun invented by
Lynall Thomas is reported by General LEROY
in his Handbook of Artillery" to have
thrown It's lib. projectile 1905 yards, the
longest range, it is said, ever known previous
to the Whitworth and our own great American
guns, which threw very much farther. 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 q dozen new
appliances of electricity and fulminants will
play 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 Notifications and field
works that will be necessarily thrown up.
The occult powers of science will be
brought more and more into play for the
production Of propulsve and explosive ageN
cies; 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 Illuminating compound,
rifed cannon or breech-loading. repeating fire.
arm yet devised. Chemistry and civil engi-
neering are likely to 60 hand in hand in this
war with appalling effect. Thus each step
onward leads to fresh range of discovery in
war as in all 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 suspicious day
when the very impossibility of war in any
other sense than as wholesale, brutal mas
sacre, according to successful manGuvring 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.