Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1886 — Fighting, Ancient and Modern. [ARTICLE]

Fighting, Ancient and Modern.

The only difference between ancient and modern armies is in the application of steam, gunpowder, and dynamite—a very great one in appearance, but not so much in reality. Modern armies do not need to be so large in the field as ancient armies; yet it is very questionable whether fewer people are required for an effective war in modern times than of old. The men who make the power and dynamite, and the girls who fill the are quite as much part and parcel of a modern army as the soldiers who fire them oft’, and run pretty nearly similar risks. The methods of modern warfare are exactly the same as of ancient warfare, and relatively not much more effective, though just as coarse and brutal. The long bow was quite as effective a weapon as the rifle, and modern cannon do not seem to be any great advantage on the balistoe and batteringrams of the ancients. In naval warfare we have actually gone back again to one of the most ancient naval maneuvers, that of ramming The siege trains of the present day are just as cumbersome as siege trains in times when, as the Bible tells us, “Mountains and hills were made low, and valleys exalted; when rough places were made plain, and the crooked straight.” Science has not yet said its last word on the adaptation of nature’s secrets to resistance against rapine, carnage, and wrong, whether exercised by nation against nation, or nations against individuals. Even now sub’stances are known to chemists which it only needs finer mechanical skill to make into efficient and invincible agents for defending civilization against barbarism and savagery. What secrets may be, and nd doubt are, hid in the womb of nature, and are waiting to be revealed by the hand of science, can only be conjectured - . But we may be sure of this much—that the higher the civilization and the more developed the intellect of the future the more hopeless will become the attempts of needy and adventurous barbarians against the well-being, of rich and highly civilized nations. If the rich Romans had left to Britain with their civilization a body of physical knowledge similar to that even of to-day, the Saxon conquest would have "been impossible.