Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1873-01-09
Limo and Column.
From the Nation.

| The new discoveries are changing the
military type of character all over the world.
The soldier of the historian, as we'll as of the
poet and novelist-the gay, dashing, restless
youth, who danced with and made love to
the women, and dueled and gambled with
men from post to post, and went under fire
with an oath or song on his lips, who used
to be the ideal "militaire," has vanished OF
is vanishing from the earth. His successor
| is grave gentleman with spectacles, whose
| uniform smells of the lamp, whose dreams
are of strategy and tactics, and whose labori-
Gus days are passed, not on ''toys or lust of
wine," but over figures and diagrams, and
among books; to whom the ''pomp and
pride and circumstance" of war is nothing,
and it's use as a naked, unadorned, savage,
but the potent instrument of the national will,
| everything. E....
Both line and column are now to be num-
bered among the things that were. The
''column of attack indeed, which has
played so famous part in military history,
may be said to belong to the past as COM
pletely as the Macedonian phalanx or the
wooden line of battle ships. We shall
never again witness such great spectacular
feats as the advance of the English column
at Fontenoy, or Macdonald's charge across
the plain of Wagram. When the Prussian
Guard, in column, attacked the French at
Mars-la-tour, in August, 1870, and lost 5000
in ten minutes, the days of close formation
came to an end. 1t is now acknowledged Oh
all hands that it will not do to send men into
action in any formation in which thev touch
elbows, or present a continuous front to the
enemys fire. In other words, total revo-
luton is taking place in tactics, which will
inevitably greatly diminish the officers con-
troll over the soldier during the progress of
the engagement, and render necessary on the
part of the latter an amount of intelligence,
self-respect and fidelity, which the soldiers of
no nation have, as a class, yet displayed,
The Prussians are now practicing system
which opens an engagement by heavy fire
of artillery, and then attacks neither in line
nor column, but with great clouds of skir-
mishers, to whom it is only possible to indi-
cate their objective point, and who reach it
as best they can-advancing across the
country in twos, or threes. or singly, care
fully avoiding any kind of formation, taking
advantage of every hollow in the ground,
tree, fence, house or wall to conceal them
selves, running here at the top 0ftheir speed,
there crawling on their bellies, and only fir
ing when they can take steady aim. We be-
lieve a column, it is true, comes after them,
but only rs sort of reserve to feed the |
SklIullSu AOTQe WIFI IreS0 men anu lOIU It's
conquests. ...4... ........ o..
1t can readily be seen that under this sys- |
tenn the superintendent of the officer must |
1t best be but slight. He can never have the
men well in hand, >" to use military phrase;
ne must trust during the greater part of the
lay to their own sense of honor, to their
courage, and to the opinion of their comrads
% prevent skulking; and it is only at the last
moment, when the final rush is to be made,
hat he can, in the strictest sense of the term,
,ut himself at their head. In short, the tao
les which carried Frederick through the
seven Years War, and Wellington through
he Peninsular and Waterloo, are vanishing
rom the camps, and in lieu of them comes,
# all things in the world, the old Indian
under which Braddock's files
vent down over century ago On the banks
f the Monongahela. .- ..z-s .r e.