BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. lix 



you not consider them to be as good officers as you can get 1 — Yes, under the present 

 system. 



6390. When you speak of instruction in strategy, what is it exactly that you propose? — 

 I should require every officer to have an acquaintance with strategical principles. 



6391. Do you mean that he should also understand the service of the commissariat ? — No. 

 What I understand under the word " strategy " is different from what I understand by the word 

 " tactics." I define tactics as what relates to the movement of troops in the presence of the 

 enemy. 



6392. As regards the discipline of the foreign schools, with which it appears that you are 

 tolerably acquainted, is it not of a very harsh nature, such as would hardly be borne by young 

 English gentlemen, and are there not several things connected with it, for instance duelling, and 

 the absence of all religious instruction, which bear no analogy to our system? — Yes, there 

 may be. 



6393. If it is supposed that foreign officers have more theoretical knowledge, do you think 

 that they have the same resource and the same power of endurance under hardship as a young 

 English officer 1 — I certainly think so ; I think that they undergo more hardship than our 

 young officers. 



6394. You do not allude to the hardships of service? — No ; the hardships of service I pre- 

 sume would be the same in both cases. The French officers in the Crimea underwent the same 

 hardships as our officers did. I do not mean to say that they did so voluntarily, but I think that 

 they could not avoid it. 



6395. You were a captain for about seven years ? — Yes. 



6396. Supposing that you had been in Ireland at the time of the Fenian disturbances, and 

 that your commanding officer had desired you to take the command of 60 men and to occupy a 

 bridge or a farmhouse in Ireland where an attack was expected, should you have felt incom- 

 petent to do so, or would you have undertaken it ? — In my own case I should have undertaken it, 

 but simply because I had been instructed in field fortification. 



6397. Do you not think that there were other officers in the battalion besides yourself who 

 would have done so ? — All those who had been instructed in the elementary principles of field 

 fortification, but no others. 



6398. (Eev. W. C. Lake.) You have not enumerated military history?— I do not think that 

 I should require an officer to know more of military history than was necessary to illustrate 

 strategical or tactical principles. 



6399. But you would require a certain amount of military history from all officers ? Yes ; 



before joining the army. 



