The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-11-01
HORRORS OF FUTURE WAR.

HORRORS OF FUTURE WAR.
10 Precedent For the scenes Which q Mod
ern War Would Brig Forth.
Gunnery is now fixed science. The
aim of artillery, and within given
range of small arms, is reduced to ar
absolute certainty. Such q thing as
missing the target is impossible if the
gunners know their business. Thus an
attack in the open against an en-
trenched foe would never be attempted
because every one of the assailants
would be slaughtered before they
reached the intrenchments. Machine
guns sweep field SO clean that no one
is left standing. AT the early battles
of the Franco-German war the French
mitrailleuses simply wiped out the
German battalions, and if Won Moltke
was always able to flank the French,
he would have been beaten. The new
field pieces are aimed not by looking at
the target, but by study of mirror
close to the gun; the elevation of the
piece and the range of the projectile
are determined with mathematical
accuracy by a sum in comic sections
Given an army with such pieces in posi-
ton and long sweep in front of their
works, general who attacked them
would simply lose his force.
Again, the whole art of war has been
summed up in the maxim that, to sue
coed, general must have more men at
the point of contact than the enemy.
There was where the French were al
ways at fault in 1870. Their generals
never knew where the enemy was or
how strong he was Their scouts were
too few and too inefficient, whereas the
German Uhlans swarmed over the coun-
try in such clouds that they always
knew where the masses of the French
were and how they could be fanked-
The difficulty of accurate and reliable
reconnaissance has been enormously
increased by the discovery of smoke
generals of the past have been guided
by the sight of powder. An experienced
leader could distinguish by the sight of
the powder smoke whether it was di-
vision or a corps that was advancing
and what way it's line of march. Now,
a body of troops can advance firing, and
if they are partially under the cover of
trees or inequalities in the ground, the
enemy cannot figure out their strength.
A general may ind, after he is engaged,
that on his left or his right flank there
is an army equal in strength to his
own, and on whose presence he had not
counted
Finally, the inevitable size of modern
armies is going to make it almost i'm
possible for any one general to conduct
battle. At the battle of Gettysburg
some $50, 600 men were engaged on both
sides; at the battle of Waterloo about
$1,000. In modern war each general
would try to concentrate not less than
500, 600 men under his command. No
man, even with all possible assistance
from telegraph and telephone wires,
could direct such vast body of men
The battle would resolve itself into
dozen battles, each conducted without
unity of purpose by army or corps COM
manders. It would be chaos in uni
form-defeat in one place, victory in
another, and finally collapse from ex.
haustion.
1t may be added that, in the absence
of wars, no particular effort has been
made to enlist electricity into the SER
vice of combatants. Yet it is evident,
even to the non-military mind, that the
destructive power of electricity has
never been tested, and that it must be
enormous 1t is easy to conjure up Wis
ions of the simultaneous humiliation
of whole brigades by the power which
can tear up mountain or shatter
layer of stratified rock. In Sherman's
march to the sea, and especially at the
capture of Fort McAllister, number
of union soldiers lost their lives by
buried torpedees. If those torpedoes
had been connected by wire which he'd
been charged throughout its length
with death and destruction, Gen. Hazen
and his brave boys would never have
lived to hoist the stars and stripes with
in sight of Savannah.-San Francisco
Call.