THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
53 
appearing suddenly in the middle of the French army, breaking up a railway 
or carrying off a prisoner or two to give information. One regiment, the 
5th Dragoons, was in daily feeling of the enemy from the 15th July to the 
20th December, when I heard of their exploits; and from the 15th of 
November to the 20th December their horses were never but once unsaddled 
at night. This was in bitterly cold weather, with frost and snow on the 
ground. Such is the kind and the quality of work which we have a right 
to expect from our cavalry, but they must not begin to learn it at the 
autumn manoeuvres. In Prussia, the cavalry recruits join in the autumn, 
and are practised throughout the winter in riding and foot drills. In spring 
the squadrons are formed, and drilled as squadrons; later in the year the 
squadrons are collected into regiments, and drilled accordingly, with constant 
study of outpost and intelligence duties. General Blumenthal told me that 
they find it necessary to place the men in various positions, ordering them 
to watch in a certain, direction; they are then visited frequently, and if they 
are found turned away from their proper outlook, they are severely punished. 
Thus it comes to pass that, when the autumn manoeuvres take place, all the 
cavalry, including the recruits of the year before, are ready to undertake 
outpost duties in the face of an enemy. 
This seems to be an opportunity for calling attention to a most serious 
want in the British military organisation. We have no intelligence depart¬ 
ment, nor even any plan for creating one instantly in case of war. During 
the great American civil war, the Prussian authorities gave leave to certaiu 
officers to quit the service temporarily and go to America, entirely ignored 
by their own Government; but they understood that if they returned with 
useful information it would be considered as a fact greatly to their credit, 
and sure to result in advantage to themselves. No questions would be 
asked as to the position they assumed to acquire the information. Before 
1866, the mountain passes of the frontier, the plains of Bohemia, Moravia, 
and Hungary were studied with such care by Prussian officers, that the 
fords on every river were known, and even the length of timbers required 
to construct bridges, should the permanent ones be broken down by the 
enemy. In the interval between 1866 and 1870, the whole of France, or 
at least the more important parts of it, were visited by German travellers— 
actually Prussian officers—who corrected the French maps, and made plans 
and sections of all the fortresses. I myself possess some of those which 
they made of the forts of Paris; and upon these plans and sections were 
based the calculations made by the artillery as to the curvature of the shot's 
path necessary to reach the foot of the escarps over the crest of the glacis. 
So little value has been attached in England to work like this, that 
almost all information voluntarily acquired used to be ignored, and the 
military attaches at embassies have been, in moments of temporary necessity, 
called upon to give speedy information as to matters upon which they had 
long before written full and careful reports. Now, is this worthy of a 
practical people like the English ? On account of our exclusiveness, our 
love of gain, and our desire for peace, foreigners delight in calling England 
“the modern Venice." We think we are something better; but as we seek 
many of the same objects, let us not forget the wise provision which the 
Venetians made for being perfectly informed on all foreign military and 
political subjects. It could not be bad, even for trade, to have the most 
