Arizona republican., 1898-09-23
It Has at Last Been Made Known Thai the BarbarOuS Methods of the Dervishes Had to Be
 Met by Barbarity.

been caused by the publication in the saturday Review of a statement that wounded dervishes, men and women. are slaughtered by the British troops as matter of necessity. Hints of this practice have been heard frequently
 since the beginning of the Soudan
 struggle. The Saturday Review gives particulars which are certain to arrest
 the attention of the civilized world.
 Secrecy" the Review says, sshas
 ever been a guiding principle with the Sirdar as with all good military com manders. No one vii deny it, and no
 one will object to the Sirdar's caution
 last winter in cloaking up his proposed
 advance. News travels fast in the
 Soudan, and the Khalifa has spies all along the river, from Cairo to Khar- toum. Secrecy, by all means, in such case as the preparation for that
 smashing of the Mahdi' which Cor
 don told Sir Evelyn Barring thirteen years ago would eventually be neces- sary. But there are other reasons why correspondents have been muzzled in such wars as those which this country has waged in the Soudan. Things have been done, have had to be done, by British officers and British soldiers which would not bear the telling; the news was suppressed at the time of their occurrence. And for good req son. The commander Of an army in
 the field has as much as he can man age on his hands to carry things i through without interference from
 armchair circles at home. He does
 not want more instructions than are absolutely essential; he does not par ticularly banker after publicity in the newspapers.
 It was found at the very outset,
 when Osman Digna first arrived in the Suakin district as the Mahdis apos-
 tie, that the dervishes were not men
 who could be fought in the manner
 customary to civilization. It was not
 a matter of manoeuvering, or coming
 into action at 1000 yards, or anything ICf that kind. The deryish method of
 fighting was something much more
 simple. The enemy being sighted
 banners are raised, swords are drawn
 spears are poised, and the whole force
 goes straight at him. That was what
 Mahmud Pasha Taher and Commander
 Moncrieff had not realized when, on
 November 4, 1883, they took $50 Egyp- tians from Suakin toward Tokar. One
 hundred and fifty dervishes completely routed them. Moncrieff was among the
 killed. Suallin was paralyzed, stiff with terror. Then poor Valentine Baker, our former dashing colonel of Hussars, was commissioned by the khe-
 dive to retrieve this disaster His Egyptians were slaughtered at Fl Teb
 like sheep; they fed, they knelt on
 the desert, raising their hands iii prayer, stretching forth their necks to the sword. There was 10 quarter for Egyptians or English; their heads rolled in the sand; their bodies were smitten through and through with spears. Hicks had perished with 6 great army in faraway Kordofan. It
 was the same there. England was reused. Two armies led by English officers had suffered complete defeat, in one case annihilation. Gerald Gra ham was sent out, and new for the first time the English private soldier joined battle with the dervish: now for the first time he learned what manner cf fighting man was the fuzzy-wuzZy | And from that time must be dated the | 'unwritten chapters of Soudanese war fare. From that time Tommy Atkins l became familiar with slaughter in a | form new to him-the slaughter of wo- | mon and the slaughter of wounded | men. It sounds terrible. All warfare is terrible; Soudan warfare is a horror | beyond words.
 After one of those early battles-a | tremendous fight hand to hand, bayo- i net to spear, in q whirlwind of dust, | through which the fighters caught | glimpses of flashing steel and waving 1 banners, while the heavy air was rent by the rattle of musketTy and screams i Of passion-a party of soldiers, with a or two among them, were | over one of the enemy's dead | Why it's a woman! said one of ths some Tommy who had sisters at home maybe; what a bloomin' shame it seems now, don't it?' One of | the reporters thought the same, and l said so. But there was also present an officer, long resident of Suakil, who | knew the ways of the faithful, and he | said to the reporter: You see what she's got in her hand?' "A stick Yes; | and do you know what she would have done with it?' The reporter did not know, but hs presumed she was going to fight with it. No, she was net go- l