Whenever A Turk
Or A Traveller Is Murdered, A Few Squadrons Of Irregular Cavalry Are
Ordered Out; They Are Not Too Nice Upon The Subject Of Retaliation, And
Rarely Refuse To Burn A Village Or Two, Or To Lay Waste The Crops Near The
Scene Of Outrage.
A civilized people, like ourselves, objects to such measures for many
reasons, of which none is more feeble than the fear of perpetuating a
blood feud with the Arabs.
Our present relations with them are a "very
pretty quarrel," and moreover one which time must strengthen, cannot
efface. By a just, wholesome, and unsparing severity we may inspire the
Bedouin with fear instead of contempt: the veriest visionary would deride
the attempt to animate him with a higher sentiment.
"Peace," observes a modern sage, "is the dream of the wise, war is the
history of man." To indulge in such dreams is but questionable wisdom. It
was not a "peace-policy" which gave the Portuguese a seaboard extending
from Cape Non to Macao. By no peace policy the Osmanlis of a past age
pushed their victorious arms from the deserts of Tartary to Aden, to
Delhi, to Algiers, and to the gates of Vienna. It was no peace policy
which made the Russians seat themselves upon the shores of the Black, the
Baltic, and the Caspian seas: gaining in the space of 150 years, and,
despite war, retaining, a territory greater than England and France
united. No peace policy enabled the French to absorb region after region
in Northern Africa, till the Mediterranean appears doomed to sink into a
Gallic lake.
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