The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-02
SPIRIT or THn panss.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topios-conpiled Every
DsY for the Evening Telegraph.

From the n. Y. Times.
There is, perhaps, nothing more pitiful
about war than the way in which the supple
mentsry work of blackening each others
reputation is carried on, auid the clash of
arms, by the combatants, through the news
papers. This means of otfense has been
added to the armory of civilized warfare,
curiouay enough, by the growth of humane
feeling and tho spread of the sentiment Of
human brotherhood. When lilly stormed
Madgeburg, aud his men. after violating
the women, killed every body of every
age and sex they could lay hold of,
neither he nor they were at all de-
sirous Of having the fact concealed. In
fact, they wanted the news of it spread
far and wide, so that the terror inspired by
it might save them trouble on like occasions
afterward When Turenne laid waste the
Palatinate, the last thingt that occurred to
him or his master was to feel ashamed of it.
In those days the great aim of every warrior
was to show as many evidences as possible
of his power and as long as he did this sue
cessfully, he cared little about charges of
cruelty, aud, indeed, would have laughed at
anybody who took the trouble TO bring them.
The soldier was expected to have a touch of
ferocity in his disposition, and to be only
kept from massacres even in time of peace
by rigid discipline.
Now, however, all this is changed. The
soldier has to he gentle, as well as brave.
Plumber, not to speak of the slaughter, of
the unresisting has come to be looked at as
a great stain on the reputation of an army.
Soldiers are expected to respect private pro-
perty on the march, and what they take to
take in an orderly and quasi-legal manner,
under cover of 'requisition." 1t is point
of honor with general to see that women
who fall within the sphere of his operations
are held harmless, and that no wanton de-
vastation is committed in the territory through
which he passes, even though it be the
enemys territory. Occasionally, of course,
devastation is formally and designedly COM
mitted, but always with much lamentation
over it as painful military necessity. This
state of things has furnished beligerents
with means of damaging each other they
never enjoyed in the good old days, aud
they avail themselves of those means
with ludicrous diligence. 1t is, of course,
impossible to guess what lilly would have
said if he had been denounced as a savage by
hundreds of newspapers; but the probabili-
ties are that, his morality remaining what it
was he would have enjoyed the notoriety.
Commanders in our day, and the nations
which employ them, are grown thin-skinned
in proportion to the increase of publicity by
which all deeds, both of peace and war, are
surrounded, and accordingly we find stories
of atrocities" committed by the enemys
troops now very favorite weapon of warfare
During the Rebellion the Southern newspa-
pers tened with accounts of Northern lust
and ferocity, beginning with Beauregard's
Beauty and Booty" anecdote. There were
few Southerners who were not firmly per-
suaded, on the authority of multitudinous edi-
tors, and persons who had visited New York
and Newport in the summer season, that the
plan of the Federal Government was to fill
its regiments with the dregs of the popula-
Al H.
and gamblers and murderers, and then let
them loose on the peaceful, simple, unsophis-
ticated inhabitants of Southern villages and
plantations. AS the war went on, awful
things came to light every day, showing the
tigerish disposition of the Northern troops
such as the surrender of the town in Tennes-
see to the troops for two hours, during which
the inmates of ladies' boarding-school we're
subjected to unmentionable outrages.
During the Indian mutiny the Sepoys were
served up to the English public in the same
way. Nothing was rarer than for English
women to escape outrage, followed by public
mu utilation, in the midst of crowd of re-
joicipg fiends, and people in England were
only disabused of this belief by the failure of
any of the victims of the mutilatons to make
their appearance. At first it was said that
the persons who had had their noses and ears
cut off, and their tongues cut out, were
this excuse for them ceased to be heard
or only excited a laugh In the Italian
war of 1859, the Austrians were hand
somely reviled for their brutalities.
They shot villagers without the smallest
provocation, and otherwise revelled in
cruelty. The Austro-Prussian war of 1866
did not last long enough for the Prussans to
display their character in Bohemia, but they
are making fearful exposure of their real
nature in the present conflict. The burn
ings, robberies, rapes, desecration of
churches, with which they are charged by
French newspapers, are really enough to
make angels weep, and would, if all true,
show them to be fends incarnate The
Prussians in the early days of the struggle
expended their ingenuity in this line on the
Turcos who, though doubtless unscrupulous
barbarians, were certainly made responsible
for ten times the number of murders OF
wounded men, and ten times the number of
insults to hospital nurses, they ever com.
mitted.
Much as one may regret the amount OF
mendacity expended in this line of operations
it is satisfactory as revealing the steady
growth of the power OF public opinion over
the most powerful and most excited belige
rents. No matter what victories Bismarck
may win, or how hopeless the situation of the
French may be, he acknowledges every day
that he is responsible to somebody yet more
''august' than his ''august master '-ant
that, even after the vanquished have fret
their last shot, they are not wholly de
fenseless. His frequent circulars are all SC
many appeals to the judgment of mankint
for the justification of acts which he knows
superiority of force alone would not suffice
to Justify. The French lies about thu
Uhlans, and the Prussian lies about the Tur