All the merciful humanity that even war has gained during the last two thousand years is lost.

It is a warfare where no pity is shown to non-combatants, where the weak are harried without ruth, and the vanquished maltreated with merciless ferocity.

A sad and evil feature of such warfare is that the whites, the representatives of civilization, speedily sink almost to the level of their barbarous foes, in point of hideous brutality.

The armies are neither led by trained officers nor made up of regular troops--they are composed of armed settlers, fierce and wayward men, whose ungovernable passions are unrestrained by discipline, who have many grievous wrongs to redress, and who look on their enemies with a mixture of contempt and loathing, of dread and intense hatred.

When the clash comes between these men and their sombre foes, too often there follow deeds of enormous, of incredible, of indescribable horror.