The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1904-11-05

map some of the bloodest battleelds of all history
There are Shiloh the Seven Days battles, the sec
ond Bull Run, Antietam Murfreesboro, Chancel-
lorsville, Vieksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga.
Chattanooga and the Virginia and the Atlanta
campaigns.
France and Prussia made memorable the fight
ing at Worth, Gravelotte, Sedan, Metz and Paris.
The Russians and the Turks had Plevna Shipka
Pass and Kars
Majuba Hill long ago. and Spion Kop three
years ago, made havoc for the English in South
Africa.
Port Arthur, Weihaiwei and Ningchang are
memorable to the Chinese and Japanese who fought
there ten years ago.
Manila, San Juan Hill and Santiago have
thrilled the American nation as they have brought
mourning to the Spaniards
And the war in the far east is raging to the
glory, or TO the savagery, of the new twentieth
fury.
War; to the music of 'The Girl [ Left Behind
Me- always has been another thing to the war of
which Sherman spoke so bluntly. One battle may be
a hundred lroquois theatres and another hundred
General Slocum" tragedies, and yet still be only
the expected results of the day And after the
shock and heat and dead and dying of the day.
there are taps" in the silent camps-the long, mel
anchoy notes of the bugles that are tatren up one
by one, all round the white tented feld-a sound
that brings to many hardened soldier of the day
the homeslck tears of the silent night Reveille In
the morning from the same buge may bring him to
his feet In the gray dawn, swearing at his broken
rest; but "taps, under the white stars when night
has settled down and thoughts of home are easy
and insisent bring the soldier some of the bitter
est tears of his life.
Snokeless Power Increases Wars Terrors
Within the last twenty years the horrors of war
seen on the field of battle have been multiplied
by the introduction of smokeless powder The time
was when the field of great battle, so far as a
blrds-eye view might be concerned, was smoke of
guns and rolling clouds of dust. Not only does the
smokeless powder leave the field comparatively
clear as to the effect of the enemys fire. but on the
part of those fighting the deadly bullet comes whn-
ing upon its mission of death with nothing to mark
the position of the man behind the gun. Some of
the hardest service seen by American troops botE
IN the Cuban campaign and in the Philippines came
from the sharpshooting of Spaniards and Fiipinos,
using the Mauser rife with smokeless powder
Death by lightning out of clear sky could not
have been more diseoncerting. General Kuropat-
kin, now at the head of the Russian army in the
present war with Japan, wrote nearly twenty years
ago of the disposition of the soldier under fire.
Troops do not give way so much to an Inferior
ity of numbers which forbids them holding on
They might resist after losing IS per cent of
their own numbers. They do not give way so much
because of the losses they have sustained But it is
III fear of the further hopeless losses which they
may expect if they remain where they are or con
tinue the attack"
Whether on the offensive or defensive in battle.
the soldier sees of the effect of his own and
the enemys missiles than ever before, even if the
fighting ranges have increased. Jean de Bloch
writing of the war in the Transvaal, touched upon
the in which smokeless powder virtually has
made the drill ground obsolete He says
Our officers recognized, even before they had
fired shot, that what they had practiced in peace
was utterly unsuited to the Mauser-swept field On
hardly single occasion was the usage OF the
ground adhered to-"
Plevna was one of the great object lessons in
war III the latter part of the last century. Osman
Pasha there intrenched himself against the Rus
slams, who had taken the field without having as
much as a spade with which to throw up protec-
ton for man. In the first assault of the Rus
slams, 36 per cent of the attacking force was shot
down; in the second assault rs per cent of the as
saulting Russians were killed or wounded For
four months the Turk held out against four times
MS own forces simply through his intrenehments.
Soldiers and LaboIcrs' Chances Compared
In the tables of lifes prospects it has been
shown that the British soldier in barracks win die