NEWS OF THE WEEK.
OUR Scipio has gone to Africa, and it is to be hoped, may make a good war, a good peace, and a good book out of it. If Sir Garnet Wolseley pays any attention to the papers, which a good soldier with such an expedition in hand probably seldom does, he will have left England with an impression that public opinion is in a rather muddled state concerning the policy and ends of the war which he is sent to wage. The Times has been veering and tacking, and the Pall Mall Gazette nagging at the expedition in such a way as to suggest the impression that it might perhaps be better, after all, to give up Elmina and apologise to the King of the Ashantees. The bold strokes of war which have made the defence of the British Empire so cheap in the long run would never have been made, if counsels such as these had been countenanced. " You cannot save your Empire by a calculation," as Mr. Grattan said. Whether the march to Coomassie be necessary or not will be decided by the competent Commanr we have sent out, and upon that point speculation may pause glow that he has gone ; but that stern punishment must be inflicted on the Ashantee power, extending if necessary to its obliteration, for a wanton invasion of British territory, attended with grievous losses and sufferings to those who live under the protection of our flag,— this, we take it, England expects. We are well willing to leave the time and way of inflicting it in the hands to which it has been entrusted, and are glad to know that Sir Garnet Wolseley has ample powers,—generalissimo and plenipotentiary combined.
