headlam: developments in artillery 303 



nists of the rival schools. Their 75-mm. is primarily designed for 

 the rapid fire of high explosive shell and its "rafales" did marvels 

 in throwing back the first great German advance on the Marne. 

 The English, as befits the country of the inventor, General 

 Shrapnel of the British Army, have always been great shrapnel 

 adherents; our 18-pounder was designed as a shrapnel gun, and 

 has undoubtedly the most pow^erful shrapnel in existence. I ad- 

 mit that we carried this too far in having no high explosive at all, 

 and you may possibly recall the great outburst of indignation 

 caused by some so-called "revelations" in the press regarding the 

 shortage of high explosive shell in 1915. The question now is not 

 of there being enough high explosive, but of getting the artillery 

 to use the proportion that the manufacturers- would like to 

 produce. We saw the effect of our shrapnel on the German in- 

 fantry in 1914, and we have not forgotten it. 



The second is the advisability of including howitzers in field 

 artillery. Here again we join issue with our French friends, who 

 hold that the lowest caliber for the howitzer is the 6-inch. But 

 we know^ what our howitzers have done for us, and as I see again 

 in memory the many fields on which our 4.5-inch rendered such 

 yeoman service, ever since they first came into action among the 

 slag banks and pitheads at Mons, I can scarcely imagine how we 

 should have fared without them. And here I know that our in- 

 fantry would back me up. 



Use of heavy artillery in the field. When we turn to heavy ar- 

 tillery, in which I include all natures other than field, the story is 

 one of almost miraculous progress. Broadly speaking, it may be 

 said that heavy artillery formed no part of the equipment of 

 modern armies at the commencement of the war. This is not 

 strictly true, for the Germans had a battalion of 6-inch howitzers 

 in each corps, while we had a battery of 60-pounders in each divi- 

 sion. But the use of heavy artillery in the field was no new 

 thing, though the whole world gasped in amazement when the 

 Germans brought up their big siege pieces on the Aisne. In mod- 

 ern days, it had been done with success by the Boers, who used 

 the 6-inch guns taken from the fortifications of Pretoria with suc- 

 cess against us on many occasions. As soon as Port Arthur fell 



