The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-12-19
FLOGGING AND SHOOTING.

From the FGU HGU Gazette.
We regret to say that the newspapers just
received from India appear to show that the
large portion of the British army 9uartered
there is in very serious condition. Lord
Napier of Magaala has issued general order
declaring that insubordination has become
rife among the British forces, and that it
must be put down at any cost; and he has
directed this order to be read at the head of
all regiments. The commander-in- chief evil
IDENTIFY means that no severity of punishment
must be spared in the case of military
offenses and accordingly extremely heavy
sentences have been passed by g series of
courts-martial of which tho findings are pub
lished. There is no doubt of the cause of
this new danger to the military efficiency of
the country, nor any necessity for being
mealy- -moutbed in describing it, The insub-
ordination is the direct consequence of the
abandonment of the practice of fogging.
The prediction which used to be sneered at
as coming from cold colonels" (who, how
ever, were the only persons who knew any
thing about the natter is coming true. In
the absence of the power of hogging, the
English military authorities are on the point
of having to resort to shooting
@ For reasons which we will briefly state be-
fore we conclude, we think that the punish
ment of 1ogging should not be hastily rein
troduced into the British army. Having said
foolish measure than the abandonment of
this punishment one more weakly advocated
or more symptomatic of the popular Stiffness
which threatens to be fatal to British military
efficiency. was never ventured upon in the ex-
listing condition of our forces. The Clash, 1--WE
were told, degrades the British soldier. Who,
then, is the British soldier as we have him
now? He belongs to class which is certainly
not without good qualities Of the rougher
lint Of xuhiah 10 Of ahu,tpIifu 10
that it is degraded by physical pain.
The looser sort of agricultural loborer and
the rough of the towns pretty much make up
together the material out of which the mass
of the British rank and file is composed. 1t
is class not choice in speech, not slow to
anger; one which, if it understands anything,
understands how to give and take blow.
Amopg several continental populations there
is really a feeling that physical pain, unless
inflicted with weapon and according to rules
of art, is unnatural and degrading; but the
sentiment is utterly strange to the lower
classes of Englishmen. 1t is well known to
those who have observed the flower of these
classes, the skilled operatives of the large
towns, that the amusements on which they
spend their enormous wages are those
of the coarsely athletic sort, and that
they are the great supporters of the sporting
papers. Nor is it altogether their worse feel
ings which are engaged in this way. The
easiest, perhaps the only, way of touching a
mans moral sense is to appeal to his notions
OF the penalty which ought to follow moral
offenses. Now the British lower orders un-
questionably think that the acts which they
consider to be wrong should be followed by
physical punishment. There is something
inexpressibly ludicrous in the assumption that
the man who would think himself hero if he
punched his neighbor's head for beating a
woman deems himself degraded if one of his
class is made to suffer physical pain for an
acknowledged offense
We have several times said that the true
source of the feeling against short and sharp
punishment is an unconscious transfer of the
idea of pain to ourselves, which has become
commoner than it was among a generation of
keener susceptibilities. The feeling, if
sometimes innocently selfish, is sometimes
cruelty SO; for it causes the classes with
which sympathy is affected to be punished ia
a way which is quite inappropriate to their
mental or moral condition. Among the re-
ports of courts martial received from India
is one from which we find that British pri-
vate, being confined in cell at Agra, struck
the Garrison Provost-Sergeant with his
clenched,fst. For this he is sentenced and,
in the existing state of the law, unavoidably
and righteously sentenced-to ten years penal
seryitude. But let us reflect for a moment
J on the nature of the man and On the character