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THE MILITARY ENGINEER AND HIS WORK.[1]

By Col.  W.R.  KING.

[Footnote 1:  A lecture delivered before the students of Sibley College, Cornell University, December 4, 1891.—­The Crank.]

It is not an easy matter to present a dry subject in such an attractive form as to excite a thrilling interest in it, and military science is no exception to this rule.  An ingenious military instructor at one of our universities has succeeded in pointing out certain analogies between grand tactics and the festive game of football, which appears to have greatly improved the football, if we may judge from the recent victories of the blue over the red and the black and orange, but it is not so clear that the effect of the union has been very beneficial to military science; and even if such had been the case, I fear there are no similar analogies that would be useful in enlivening the subject of military engineering.

From the earliest times of which we have record man has been disposed to strive with his fellow man, either to maintain his own rights or to possess himself of some rights or material advantage enjoyed by others.  When one or only a few men encroach on the rights of others in an organized community, they may be restrained by the legal machinery of the state, such as courts, police, and prisons, but when a whole community or state rises against another, the civil law becomes powerless and a state of war ensues.  It is not proposed here to discuss the ethics of this question, nor the desirability of providing a suitable court of nations for settling all international difficulties without war.  The great advantage of such a system of avoiding war is admitted by all intelligent people.  We notice here a singular inconsistency in the principles upon which this strife is carried on, viz.:  If it be a single combat, either a friendly contest or a deadly one, the parties are expected to contest on equal terms as nearly as may be arranged; but if large numbers are engaged, or in other words, when the contest becomes war, the rule is reversed and each party is expected to take every possible advantage of his adversary, even to the extent of stratagem or deception.  In fact, it has passed into a proverb that “all things are fair in love and war.”

Now one of the first things resorted to, in order to gain an advantage over the enemy, was to bring in material appliances, such as walls, ditches, catapults, scaling ladders, battering rams, and subsequently the more modern appliances, such as guns, forts, and torpedoes, all of which are known as engines of war, and the men who built and operated these engines were very naturally called engineers.  It is this kind of an artificer that Shakespeare refers to when he playfully suggests that “’tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard.”