Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1904-12-10
Exit War Drum and FLAG.

EXIT war Drum and Flag.
What radical change has come
over the business of war is reflected
in the dispatches and in the more
leiSurely written accounts of the fight
ing from the Yalu across to the TAX
ing OF Lao Yang. A lack of highly
eolored language in the cabled news
may be explained by lack of time ami
the expensive tolls. When we find the
same serious treatment of the Man
chnrian campaign in the magazine ar
ticles, and the same lack of poetic i'm
aglnation that used to make the war
correspondents stories glitter so. the
cause must be found elsewhere
Before individual fighting came.
with the South African war. TO upset
the old shock tactics, and when noise
and gorgeous uniforms were felt To
be as Indispensable TO successful
battle as artillery, there was room for
the play of an maginative description.
Now many of the old dramatic prop
critics of battle are gone.
The time was that the regimentaI
colors furnished frequent incident on
which to dilate. Nowadays, as We
learn from the correspondent, the
flag is useful only to fling to the
breeze as signal of an enemy's oc-
cupation of a position-a signal to the
general and the gunners" At other
times it is not unfurled to draw fire
on yourself IL is carefully rolled up.
No succession of standard bearers is
shot down under it. The correspond
ent of the present can write no longer
of shot torn battle flags" and the
public museum of the future that ex-
hibits the colors of conquering army
will have to explain that these unIn-
jured, untarnished silks marked the
event of the new style of fghtlng
which came with the Russo japanese
war
1t is thus that iconoclastic science
treats all our cherished material ira
ditions. Shimose powder ana wire
less telegraphy have brought with
them their disadvantages. Dirt col
ored uniforms have forced out the
brilliant sartorial trappings with
which the fathers were wont 10 20 10
battle Shining swords are left at
home for dress parade purposes sill
yered and nickeled pistols give way to
dull barrels. War ever loses it's CLAM
or and becomes more and more
trade.
And the fife and drum? Gone. too
Your modern army marches without
music. II is written that the Ameri-
| can soldier in the next war must go
to the firing line without hearing the
quiekeuing air OF THE Star SpanglcI
Banner" Dixie" or that other ma
tional hymn, "Therell BE Hot Time
in the Old Town Tonight" Even the
French must front the foe uncheered
by the stirring tune with which Gen.
Brunswick in the Argonne pass. ia
Marseillaise' will be reserved for
peaceful celebrations of the fall of the
Bastile and concerts. The japanese
army goes TO the firing line without
drums. A few of them were found
VI All Iii the duNhntp line OF
the Russians morning attack at Mo-
tienling, But this only goes to prove
that Russia is nation asleep. When
her military awakening comes she,
too, must consign the drummer boy To
the discarded pile where the bow and
arrow and the black powder rifle were
flung. and where rusts the coat of
mail and the lance and the hintlocll
musket rots.
The day foretold by the prophetic
Tennyson is literally here
When the war drums throb no long
or and the battle flags are furlcd"
but the parliament of man, the fed
GRAFTON of the world" is not yet come.
1t is only that the march Of military
progress, though it is ahead OF peace
agreement of The Hague, commands
belligercnts to tap no drums and I'M
furl no flags as "A matter of purely
military safety.-New York Press.