To the Editor of "Fraser's Magazine."
Sir: The article on modern warfare in your last June number[29] contains statements of so great importance to public interest, that I do not hesitate to ask you to spare me space for a question or two respecting it, which by answering, your contributor may make the facts he has brought forward more valuable for practical issues.
The statistics[30] given in the second column of page 695, on which P. S. C. rests his "incontestable" conclusion that "battles are less sanguinary than they were," are incomplete in this vital respect, that they furnish us only with the proportion, and not with the total number, of combatants slain. A barricade fight between a mob of rioters a thousand strong, and a battery of artillery, in which fifty reformers get shot, is not "less sanguinary" than a street quarrel between three topers, of whom one gets knocked on the head with a pewter pot: though no more than the twentieth part of the forces on one side fall in the first case, and a third of the total forces engaged, in the second. Nor could it be proved by the exhibition of these proportions of loss, that the substitution of explosive shells, as offensive weapons, for pewter pots, rendered wounds less painful, or war more humane.
Now, the practical difference between ancient and modern war, as carried on by civilized nations, is, broadly, of this kind. Formerly, the persons who had quarrelled settled their differences by the strength of their own arms, at the head of their retainers, with comparatively inexpensive weapons such as they could conveniently wield; weapons which they had paid for out of their own pockets, and with which they struck only the people they meant to strike: while, nowadays, persons who quarrel fight at a distance, with mechanical apparatus, for the manufacture of which they have taxed the public, and which will kill anybody who happens to be in the way; gathering at the same time, to put into the way of them, as large a quantity of senseless and innocent mob as can be beguiled, or compelled, to the slaughter. So that, in the words of your contributor, "Modern armies are not now small fractions of the population whence they are drawn; they represent—in fact are—whole nations in arms." I have only to correct this somewhat vague and rhetorical statement by pointing out that the persons in arms, led out for mutual destruction, are by no means "the whole nation" on either side, but only the individuals of it who are able-bodied, honest, and brave, selected to be shot, from among its invalids, rogues, and cowards.
The deficiencies in your contributor's evidence as to the totality of loss do not, however, invalidate his conclusion that, out of given numbers engaged, the mitrailleuse kills fewer than the musket.[31] It is, nevertheless, a very startling conclusion, and one not to be accepted without closer examination of the statistics on which it is based. I will, therefore, tabulate them in a simpler form, which the eye can catch easily, omitting only one or two instances which add nothing to the force of the evidence.
In the six under-named battles of bygone times, there fell, according to your contributor's estimate, out of the total combatants—
| At Austerlitz | ⅐ |
| Jena | ⅙ |
| Waterloo | ⅕ |
| Marengo | ¼ |
| Salamanca | ⅓ |
| Eylau | 1/2½ |
while in the under-named five recent battles the proportion of loss was—
| At Königgratz | 1/15 |
| Gravelotte | 1/12 |
| Solferino | 1/11 |
| Worth | 1/11 |
| Sedan | 1/10 |