54 
MINUTES OF PKOCEEDINGS OF 
perfect information and the most perfect maps of every country, and if it 
came to a foreign war, every officer ought to be provided at the country's 
expense with an excellent map of the theatre of operations. The Prussians 
did this, with their limited military expenditure; why should not we do it 
with our large one ? 
The organisation of a war intelligence department should at least be 
sketched out, and there would be plenty of work even now for the officers 
composing it, who might try their prentice hands upon England to begin 
with. The maps of the district comprised within the manoeuvres this year 
were so often wrong in roads, woods, and enclosures, that it was quite 
impossible to ride by them with any confidence. 
Artillery and Transport . 
The first remark to be made with regard to the artillery at the late 
manoeuvres is, that there was no clear distinction made between divisional 
and reserve artillery. In all armies taking the field, so far as I am aware, 
this distinction is invariably made; indeed, in large armies there are usually 
two reserves—the reserve artillery of each corps, and the reserve of the army, 
held more closely under the hand of the general. Curiously enough, in 
some of the orders as to detail. of troops in the manoeuvres, the whole of 
the artillery was set down as reserve. It was only after the second division 
was broken up and divided between the other divisions, and 1 not while there 
were actually two divisions in one army, that something like a distinction 
between divisional, or brigade, and reserve artillery appeared to be made. 
It is an old complaint that few generals know how to make best use of their 
artillery. Even Napoleon—who w r as perhaps the greatest master in handling 
the three arms that Europe has produced—himself an artilleryman, used to 
give much of the management of the guns to his trusted artillery generals. 
Until this year, it has been the custom in the English service to place the 
batteries in line with the infantry and keep them there, in fatal rejection of 
the knowledge that just where the fire of infantry ceases to be effective that 
of rifled guns only begins to be valuable; and, furthermore, that to place 
field batteries within practical range of the enemy's infantry, is to make 
certain that, win or lose, the guns will have to stay there, for the horses 
must be killed. There are few who know how tenaciously this old system 
was adhered to, or how indignant were many superior and much respected 
officers of renowmed names when the contrary opinion began to be advocated. 
But, in England at least, truth is all-powerful, and will sooner or later 
prevail over prejudice. There is no one of the acts of His Boyal Highness 
the Commander-in-Chief for which artillerymen—and not only they, but the 
whole army—have such reason to be grateful, as the order which freed the 
English field artillery for ever from the trammels in which it had hitherto 
been bound, and raised it to the splendid position of honour and responsi¬ 
bility which it now occupies. With that responsibility the men may surely 
be trusted who showed battery after battery in such perfect order as to draw 
forth praise from all beholders. When a future writer pens the history of 
the English Boyal Artillery, he will be able to say that in the reign of the 
Duke of Cambridge the greatest advance was made in the progress of 
artillery tactics since the time of Frederick the Great. 
