THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
231 
AN ENDEAVOUR TO DETERMINE 
TACTICAL BASIS 
tor 
THE ARTILLERY OF ENGLAND. 
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE R.A. INSTITUTION, WOOLWICH, JAN. 3, 1873, 
MAJOR H. LE G. GEARY, E.A. 
Sir Collingwood Dickson and Gentlemen :— 
There have been many lectures of more or less ability delivered in 
this Institution, which have greatly advanced the cause of artillery 
science amongst ns, both in the arsenal and in the field; there 
has been still more written and presented to ns by officers in the 
papers of this Institution, and in the public press, having the same object, 
of undoubted value. But perhaps the most cheering and encouraging 
result of all has been, to prove to the world that there exists in the 
regiment at the present day, an enthusiasm noble as that which Captain 
Duncan has lately reminded us inspired our fathers—an enthusiasm 
which only seems to require right direction, method, and opportunity to 
land the corps whose welfare we all have so much at heart, so far ahead 
in artillery science, in the largest sense, as it is already, in material and 
equipment, ahead of its continental representatives. 
I do not propose to-day to occupy your time in recapitulating all the 
lessons that have been deduced from the latest wars on the continent of 
Europe; abler heads than mine have already thought them out, and 
we are proud to know that no abler hands have written them than those 
of officers of the Royal Artillery. Only as a gleaner in the field in 
which others have labored do I presume to pray your attention to one 
deduction which has not yet been discussed so fully as it seems to me to 
deserve. The Germans and French—and notably the Germans after the 
campaign of 1866—attributed their shortcomings to the defective organ¬ 
isation of their artillery. All their complaints of artillery fire frittered 
away, guns not being up in time, opportunities for grand coups missed, 
seem to be referred to that capital defect. The commentators on our 
side seem to have endorsed this self-accusation. As we have been so 
happily placed in the spectators* gallery during these events, and have 
so readily entered into the judgment seat on the actors engaged, I 
conceive that it would be worse than foolish, worse than a blunder—nay, 
an unpardonable sin, for us any longer to seek to evade the question as 
it affects ourselves. I know, Gentlemen, that this question of organisa¬ 
tion has engaged the attention of many of us from days dating back to 
before the collapse of the last French empire; and believe that the 
[vol. viii,] 27 
