MAKING OK BREAKING. 
181 
but to pick boles in it. Doubtless it is impossible to render books of 
instruction and dissertations on great guns attractive, bub at present no 
attempt is made to do so. It is easy to cavil, and the question at once 
rises to the lips, “ How are you to supply tbe place of these heavy 
and alarming treatises ?” I submit that the remedy is easy. The bird 
tribe feed their young by partially masticating the grain or the worms 
which compose their usual diet, and administering it in this wholesome 
form to the callow brood, who could not digest it in its original state. 
I would make the Lieut.-Colonels play the role of the old birds. This 
may be a startling and revolutionary suggestion, and one which, if any 
attention at all be paid to it, is likely to call down upon my devoted 
head the wrath of a large and influential section of the regimental 
community. Be that as it may, my conviction is a strong one, and I 
propose to uphold it. Nobody, not even the Lieut.-Colonels themselves, 
will traverse the statement that these officers have more time on their 
hands than anybody else. They have not (or should not have) gained 
their exalted rank without having become efficient instructors in, and 
skilled translators of, the jargon of their trade; and, in their frequent 
leisure moments, it should give them bub little trouble to compile 
notes for lectures in simple language, which should materially help the 
young birds to digest their necessary, but, in its crude form, unwhole¬ 
some diet. (( Attack Problems 33 are excellent things in their way, 
but, without sedulous and judicious preparation, they are apt to inspire 
the most abject terror and heartfelt loathing. Seen through the baleful 
light of our modern text-books, these “ Attack Problems 33 appear to 
be refinements of cruelty ; whereas, if administered in small doses and 
at not too frequent intervals, they may almost be made to lose the 
sickly flavour attaching to anything akin to an examination paper, and 
to breed a healthy spirit of emulation among their victims. 
How does this same Attack Problem shape itself at first to the jaded, 
over-instructed youngster ? His first feeling is one of bitter resent¬ 
ment, and he will read the thing through with fervid zeal begot of the 
hope to find some glaring error, some foolish and obvious lapsus , on 
the part of the paid tormentor who set it. Possibly, indeed very pro¬ 
bably, his search may be moderately successful, but the feeble resulting 
joy is soon damped by the oppressive dulness and complication of the 
task. For him it has no semblance of reality; to him it is no vivid 
and smartly-written ce skeleton 33 account of an attack on part of a 
fortress, of which his intimate knowledge will enable him to readily 
fill in the details ; no set of conditions which his manipulative skill 
and orderly mind can marshal into the form of an interesting and 
connected narrative. No ! to him it is a cruel and unnecessary scrutiny 
of a sadly muddled brain teeming with blurred impressions, in which 
horizontal displacement,” “ curves of penetration,” “ dangerous 
zones,” “ ordinates,” “ abscissae,” and all the undigested lumps result¬ 
ing from his last cram, jostle each other iu hapless, hopeless disorder. 
He must, perforce, try and write something; and then, in despair of 
remembering at what portions of which ship he should fire various 
projectiles at specified ranges, he interlards his feeble screed with such 
thunderous, multisyllabic words of the cult, as he can remember (and 
