The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-03
TIE q GUERILLA WARFARE OF THE
FUTURE.
Rron the Poll Man Gazette.

FROM the Pail MdH Gazette.
There are certain questions of high import
ance to society, which are always debated
whenever they practically arise, and never
settled, for the simple reason that both par
ties are in the right. Each has irrefragable
arguments to offer in favor of his views, and
neither can convince the other, or bring an
impa rtial Judge to his side, because their lines
of reasoning never coincide or meet in some
common issue on which judgment can be
given. familiar instance is to be found in
the discussion, which every fresh occasion is
certain to renew, on the right or wrong of
martial law in the popular (not professionally
sense of the phrese. Every one knows that
martial law, in this country at least, is
synonymous with no law at ALL Every agent
of power who executes its DEGREES on a citi-
zen is guilty of legal crime and punishable
by the regular tribusals. And every one
knows, which is more seriously to the
purpose, that its arbitrary character, and the
inhsmed state of feelings under which it is
generally administered, lead to great excesses
and abuses. All this is undeniably true.
And yet it is equally true, on the other hand,
that the right to apply it must exist, and will
most certainly be resorted to whenever the
authorities are convinced that resort to it is
necessary to avoid greater evils. No society,
whatever its form of government, will sub
init to see its peace and its very existence
endangered from reluctance to use summary
means for its own defense All that can
really be done is, to exercise the utmost eau
tion as to the occasion on which it must be
employed and the hands to which its execu-
tion is confded Controversy on the general
subject, on bases on which the two parties
are not and never can be agreed is really
idle.
Precisely the same impossibility Of solution
applies to the problem which is now SO vehe-
mently, and we must say so vaguely, agitated
about the so-called right of irregular resist
ance to invasion by regular soldiers. Civil
lians who take up arms for the defense of
their invaded country, or of their own hearths
and homes, threat ened with military occupa-
tion, are patriots according to one doctrine,
robbers according to another. And the two
doctrines will certainly continue to prevail in
contradiction to each other, without the pos
sibility of decision between them before the
tribunal of public opinion or any other tri-
bunal, so long as the great abuse called war
continues. War has it's recognized code
In civilized countries, and acts done within
the limits of that code are sanctioned
by it. Outside the limits of that code all is
vague. There is neither law nor recognized
morality. No one can seriously condemn the
partisan" or ''freeshooter'' or "guerilla"
who is driven into the field either by the
sense of personal injury or by love Of his
country, and takes the life of his uniformed
opponent. No one can seriously condemn
the military chief who seizes on him and puts
him summarily to death. Each acts in obedi-
ence to his sense of duty; the one defends his
fatherland, the other protects the lives of his
soldiers. The only ready award between
them is on what we may call (without disre-
spect) the feminine principle, though COM
monty adopted in time of need by masculine
reasoners also:-I am in the right in this war,
you are in the wrong; therefore 1 may shoot
at you from behind hedge, but you may not
retaliate by hanging me.
And no nation was ever so lavish of this
kind of reasoning in the mouths of its chief
tains as the French, who now have to pay
the penalty of many q wanton indulgence in
it. The proclamation and dispatches of the
First Napoleon may be consulted with ad-
vantage as perfect manual of ike audacious
fallacy which proceeds on the assumption
that the speaker is in the right, and therefore
that ordinary rulessof morality are nulliied
or reversed as between him and his opponent
In Calabria, the Tyrol, Spain, Russia, his
ang uage was always the same; short shrift
with as little as might be of preliminary in
quiry, for the civilian who had slain or re-
sisted French soldier. There was no affeeta-
tion of regret, no endeavor to- establish
the nice doctrine that a man might be a
patriot, hero, or q martyr in the eyes of
his own people, and yet must be shot as
victim to the necessary law of self-defense
by another people. In those resolute eyes of
his they were all ''brigands" alike, and their
determination was not only indispensable, bu t
debt due to justice. And yet, as we all
know, when the tables were turned on the
great conqueror, the opposite line of doc
trine was at once assumed and preached with
the same absolute self-confdence. The pea
santry of Champagne were urged in 1918 by
the most vehement appeals of their Emperor
to take up every man his musket, to throw
themselves on the rear of the invader, to cut
off his stragglers, to annoy him with street
fighting, to remember that every citizen in
case of invasion is dispensed from the con-
ventional professional law of military men,
and has to do his best or worst in defense of
country and sovereign. Now the orders of
Napoleon were really justifable in both cases.
In regular warfare, neither the invaded pea
SAINT who shoots the invading soldier moi
the invading officer who commands the exc
cution of the peasant can be condemned
according to any recognized principle. The
only thing really noticeable is the cynica
daring with which Napoleon pronounced
Judgment on both sides. The recently-pub
ished extracts from the last Emperor's inter
cepted correspondence raise painful remi
niscence connected with the same question
Macmillan writes to him from Mexico an
nouncing, though with sensitive regret, tn,
measure into which military pressure hat
driven him-the proclamation of death to al
''guerillas," that is, bands of Mexican
''patriots." They were killing his French
soldiers, and from his point of view he hat
the right to do it, but the exercise of tina
right cost him his life, and, in strictness, no
unrighteously.
These are commonplace maxims, doubt