22 Sir Frederick Ahel [Jan. 31, 



will no longer receive indications where their comrades are engaged, 

 while sentries and advanced posts will no longer be able to warn the 

 main body of the approach of an enemy by the discharge of their 

 rifles, and, that battles might possibly be raging within a few miles of 

 columns on the march without the fact becoming at once apparent to 

 them. 



It is somewhat difficult to conceive that, in these comparatively 

 enlightened days — an acquaintance with the first principles of physical 

 science having for many years past constituted a preliminary condi- 

 tion of admission to the training establishments of the future warrior — 

 the physical impossibility of such fairy tales as appear to be considered 

 necessary in France for the delusion of the ordinary public, would 

 not at once have been obvious. Yet, even in professional publications 

 in Germany, where we are led to expect that the judgment of experts 

 would be comparatively unlikely to be led astray through lack of 

 scientific knowledg^e, we have, during the earlier part of last year, read, 

 in articles upon the influence of smokeless powder upon the art of 

 war (based evidently upon the reports received from France), such 

 passages as these : — " The art of war gains in no way as far as sim- 

 plicity is concerned ; on the contrary, it appears to us that the 

 absence of so important a mechanical means of help as noise and 

 smoke were to the commander, requires increased skill and circum- 

 spection in addition to the qualities demanded by a general " 



" The course of a fight will certainly be mysterious, on account of the 

 relative stillness with which it will be carried on." 



In an amusing article, in imitation of the account of the Battle of 

 Dorking, which appeared in the ' Deutsche Heeres Zeitung,' of April 

 last, the consternation is described with which a battalion receives the 

 information from a wounded fugitive from the outposts that the 

 enemy's bullets have been playing havoc among them, without any 

 visible or audible indications as to the quarter of attack. Later in 

 the year, and especially since the manceuvres before the German and 

 Austrian Emperors, when the employment of the new smokeless 

 powder was the event of the day, the absurdity of the assertions 

 as to the noiselessness of the new powders became a theme for strong 

 observations in the German service papers ; the assumed existence of a 

 noiseless powder was ridiculed as a thing equally impossible with a 

 recoil-less powder ; the violence of the report, or explosion, produced 

 upon the discharge of a firearm being in direct relation to the volume 

 and tension of the gaseous matter projected into the surrounding air. 



The circumstance that blank ammunition was alone used in the 

 smokeless powder exhibition at the German manoeuvres may have 

 served to lend some support to the assertions as to comparatively little 

 noise made by the powder — the report of blank cartridges being slight, 

 on account of the small and lightly confined charges used. It is said 

 that the sound of practice with blank ammunition at the German 

 manoeuvres, was scarcely recognised at a distance of 100 metres. In 

 a recently published pamphlet on the results of employment of the 



