Missouri Valley times. [volume] (Missouri Valley, Iowa) 1874-1931, 1901-05-02
MODERN WARFARE
IS LESS DEADLY
Battle6eIds Not Piled With the Dead
Of Slaughtered Armies as
in Ancient Times.
rEw WEAPONS ARE MORE HUMANE
Fighting Is Carried ON at Greater
Distance and n Defeated Army
Can Now Eeasily Escape
Annihilation.

When men get so near together that
they cannot run away with any chance
of escaping they must either kill or be
killed. Hence the same instinct of
preservation which nowadays makes
man coward made him in the old
historic days hero, says the Satur-
day Review. Whole armies and tribes
persisted in the Homeric combats of
antiquity. When your foes stood but
few yards from you to turn your
back meant to give him the opening to
deal death blow for which he was
watching, and to run away was, there
fore, more dangerous than to face
him.
In the days of Eugene and Marl'bor-
ough, although villainous saltpetre
had asserted its supremacy, it took a
long time to load and fire a musket,
and the bayonet and broadsword
were the surest means OF destruction.
Cold steel was the stanchest ally even
up to the early days of the present
century, and to give them the bayo-
net" the most favored tactical device
of our pcninsular generals. Brown
Bess was ineffective at 100 yards, and
to hit haystack at half that range
was as much as the soldier had any
right to expect. Thus armies, when
they drew together for fight, had to
come to the closest quarters to gain
any important or far-reaching result.
Not so near together, perhaps, as were
the antagonists of century before,
but far more within the reach of one
another than were the French and
Germans in 1870. The vanquished
could not escape so easily as in that
last campaign, and in accordance with
experience, although it took longer to
effect the slaughter, the piles of dead
were higher, therefore, in the earlier
than in the latter days. AT Zorndorf
one-half to one-third of the total
forces engaged were either killed or
wounded; at Marengo one-quarter
were left on the field; at Borodino the
blood of one-third dyed the Russian
snow. The invention of rifled guns
and muskets reduced the losses at
| Solferino to one-eleventh, at Konnig-
gratz to one-fifteenth, while even the
chassepot and mitrailleuse did not
bring the total at Gravelotte to more
than one-eleventh of all the forces en-
gagged.
Will be Few Omdurmnns.
Yet, In spite of the testimony of sta
tistics such as these, our newspapers
have lately been filled with the most
sensational paragraphs as to the hor-
rors modern war will bring with it,
and the headlines covering the poten-
tialities of our newest weapons have
been positively nauseating. 1t seems
to be imagined that because rs, 900 der
wishes were killed and wounded in a
forenoon the other day therefore we
may expect similar holocaust every
time bataille rangee is accepted. The
circumstances under which these gal
liant lives were lost seem often lost
sight of, and the smallncss of our own
losses appears to convey no meaning
to the sensation mongers. 1t might
have been supposed that the lessons of
the war in Thessaly would have had
some steadying effect on the perfervid
imaginations of our journalists. There
we saw modern weapons and appli-
ances also brought into the field,
magazine rifles, breechloading cannon
made by the indefatigable Herr
K1upp, shrapnel shells and the whole
paraphernalia of destruction which
are to turn the battlefields of the fu-
ture into abattoirs. Yet, as happened
on another celebrated occasion, mo
one Comparatively speaking) seemed
one penny the worse!" The unspeals-
able Turk has seldom INDUCED in
bloodshed so abstemionsly as at Do
mokos. The valiant Greeks made nc
hecatombs such as caused the coil to
reek in the old classic days.
Easily-Explained Anomaly.
The anomaly is easily explained
Both parties knew the deadliness OF
the others armament, and, like many
of the opponents in the old dueling
times, the nerves of both were more OF
less Influenced by what they knew A
few hits were enough to make them
keep their distance. The guns never
dared to move into decisive range, and
when one side had done enough to sat
isfy its sense of self-respect 1t made g
strategic movement to the rear. Long
range fire, both from rifles and guns
had an exceptionally good opportunity
for exhibiting its destructive effect
y a