THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
511 
the operations that one can form no judgment of the value of the force. 
Suffice it to say, that what were there did very well, and kept up the 
credit of their stay-at-home brethren. The handful of this force were 
volunteers of volunteers , should be taken as the very pick of this force, 
and no criterion whatever of what might be expected of it when called 
out in any numbers. 
In conclusion, I am sure you will agree with me in hoping that the 
manoeuvres may become annual, and that such a good beginning may 
not be allowed to drop; also, that the next may be more assimilated to 
actual war operations. In order to secure this, it must be an absolute 
necessity that they be removed for the future from even the atmosphere 
of Aldershot, and also to a site, where the nature of the country is less 
difficult to work over. I hope also that the “autumn manoeuvres” 
may induce us to leave off the pernicious system of always crying down 
our own army to the extolling of other nationalities, any one of whom 
would have found it hard to have put 33,000 men of such quality in 
the field; and moreover force every thinking soldier to the fact, that 
now more than ever, there is reason for the maxim of the great Napoleon, 
that “ I/Artillerie prend sa place.” 
October, 1871. 
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