The sanitarian seeks to aid in the amenities and relaxations of life as well. The playgrounds for children, the athletic grounds by the riverside at Boston, recreation piers in New York, are examples of this. And all of these are comparatively recent efforts, adding to the catalogue of achievements during the century. It was the arch-enemy who, in the poem of antiquity, said: “All that a man hath will he give for his life.” But he made the remark after much observation, and to Jehovah, unto whom even he would not dare to lie; and the rolling years since the Hebrew epic was first written have only added testimony to the truth of the assertion. In these later days, when the rule and plummet are everywhere applied, where the scientist delves and classifies to seek the cosmos in the apparent chaos, there was evolved out of self-seeking for life a higher and better quest,—a search for those things which make for the health of all. This search has widened, until many a broad savannah has been trodden, many a mountain scaled and wilderness explored. With its ever extending view, new responsibilities and greater cares have been thrust upon those who are endeavoring to rule in this domain. A community, a nation, is but a unit. Let one part suffer, and all are in pain; let one but decay, and rot is imminent everywhere. There can be no true social progress, no real stability of government, no national prosperity worthy the name, unless the environment of each individual permits the enjoyment of personal health, if he individually observes but the ordinary care of self. And whatever else of progress for sanitary science may be granted or denied as belonging to our century, the crowning claim of all, which cannot be taken from her, is that, along with the ideas embodied in commonweal and commonwealth, she has added the other of equal dignity and worth—Public Health.
THE CENTURY’S ARMIES AND ARMS
By LIEUTENANT-COLONEL ARTHUR L. WAGNER,
Assistant Adjutant General, U. S. Army.
A true appreciation of the progress made in the arts and sciences in the nineteenth century can be obtained only by contrasting the conditions found at present with those existing a hundred years ago. The difference between the sperm candle and the electric light; between the stage-coach and the rapid-flying express train; between the flail and the threshing machine; between the hand-loom and the machinery of the modern woollen mill; between the cruel medical operations of five score years ago and the skillful surgery, with the use of anæsthetics, of the present day; or between the mail-carrier with letters in his saddle-bags and the electric telegraph flashing news instantaneously from continent to continent; marks the difference between the beginning of the nineteenth and the opening of the twentieth centuries.
But there is scarcely an agency that has been employed during this wonderful century for the improvement of the condition of man that has not been enlisted for his destruction. Steam, electricity, chemical knowledge, engineering skill, and mechanical invention have all been employed in the science of war, and everything pertaining to the organization, arms, equipment, supply, training, and even the size of armies, has been so revolutionized that there is scarcely anything in common between the forces that fought at Marengo and those employed in recent wars, except the characteristic of being armed and organized bodies of soldiers under military leadership.
The nineteenth century was born in the midst of war. All Europe was an armed camp, and the contest between the principles of the French Revolution and the old feudal system had taken the form of actual strife upon the field of battle. A great alteration was taking place in the methods of war; the old pedantic strategy of the Austrian school had already received a rude shock at the hands of the brilliant young Bonaparte, and the old tactical methods bequeathed by Frederick the Great were, also, soon to be shattered by the genius of the newer and greater warrior. To appreciate the changes that were already being made in military methods, a brief glance at the organization of the armed forces in the latter part of the eighteenth century is necessary. The Prussian army, as organized by the great Frederick, was regarded as the finest of the time. In it the most exact and machine-like methods were observed, the most careful accuracy in marching was required, drill was carried to mechanical perfection, volley firing was conducted with the greatest precision, and no skirmishers were employed. In comparison with later methods, the whole system may be characterized as exact, methodical, and slow. Armies were supplied entirely from magazines, by means of long and cumbrous trains, and the art of moving rapidly and subsisting on the country was still to be discovered.
OLD STYLE SHRAPNEL.
The French army produced by the Revolution, and led by such men as Dugommier, Hoche, Moreau, and Bonaparte, was trained to operate in column, to deploy quickly into line, and generally to act with celerity; while the impoverished treasury of the republic compelled its armies to live entirely upon the country in which they were operating, as the only alternative to starvation. This entailed serious hardships to the soldiers, and great distress to the population of the country in which they were acting, but it marked distinctly the beginning of a new system of supply, which contributed greatly to the rapid movement of armies. The French army, at the beginning of the century, contained no regiments, but was organized into demi-brigades, each of which consisted of four battalions, each comprising ten companies, two of which were trained to act as skirmishers. These demi-brigades, with one or more batteries of artillery, constituted a division, to which a small force of cavalry was generally added. In 1805 Napoleon, then the supreme ruler of France, made important changes in the organization of the army. The demi-brigade was replaced by the two battalion regiments, each regiment now consisting of eight companies. Two regiments formed a brigade, and two brigades and a regiment of light infantry constituted a division. On the light regiment devolved the duties of skirmishers; namely, to harass and develop the enemy before the main attack. The divisions were grouped into larger organizations known as corps d’armée, or army corps, each of which consisted of all arms of the service, and was, in fact, a force capable of operating independently as a small army.[2] A corps of reserve cavalry was also formed. In numbers the cavalry was equal to one fourth, and the artillery one eighth of the strength of the infantry. The infantry was armed with a smooth-bore, muzzle-loading, flint-lock musket, which required some thirty-two distinct motions in loading, and which had an effective range of only two hundred yards, though by giving it a high elevation it could do some damage at twice that distance. This weapon bore about the same relation to the magazine rifle of the present day that the old-fashioned sickle bears to the modern mowing-machine. The artillery consisted of muzzle-loading, smooth-bore guns, which had less than one fourth the range of the modern infantry rifle. Cavalry, being able to form with comparative impunity within close proximity of the opposing infantry, could sweep down upon it in a headlong charge; and the use of the sabre on the field of battle, now so rare, was then an almost invariable feature of every conflict. Under Napoleon the armies continued to “live on the country,” but magazines of supplies were carefully prepared to supplement the exhausted resources of the theatre of war.