THE GERMAN METHOD OE BRINGING GUNS INTO ACTION. 
117 
Duchy of Baden, which I attended last year (1896), I made a point of 
enquiring from a number of artillery officers as to the reason and 
origin of their system of unlimbering under cover and running the 
guns up by hand. When I could I selected officers who had fought in 
the war of 1870-71 who had been exposed to artillery fire. Among 
others a Colonel commanding an artillery regiment, who was in the 
Artillery of the Guard, which, on the day of the battle of Sedan, ad¬ 
vanced through Villars-Cerny and came into position between the 
Bois de Villars-Cerny and the hill above Daigny against the batteries 
of the I. French Corps (Ducrot), which were in position on the high 
ground on the other side of the Givonne, with their left near the Bois 
de Garenne, told me, that when they had nearly subdued the fire of the 
French batteries three batteries, one after another, came up the Fond 
de Givonne to reinforce the latter, in most gallant style, and that with¬ 
out any attempt at seeking cover they proceeded to unlimber in their 
selected fire positions. The three batteries were absolutely destroyed 
[zusammen geschossen ) without firing one single shot ! These batteries 
it appeared, from the French report, were ordered up by the Emperor 
himself. A similar fate befell several French batteries on the plateau 
de Floing at the hands of the artillery of the V. and XI. Corps. 
“Fas est ab hoste doceri and it was from such incidents as these 
that the Germans learnt how not to come into action against superior 
or anything like equally well armed and trained artillery. 
Their rules on the subject seem as perfect as rules can be. They admit 
of exceptions in cases in which any Commanding Officer, who has a head 
on his shoulders, would make exceptions in real warfare; and, as is 
the German system in all military matters of the kind, they leave a great 
amount of latitude to the Officers Commanding to exercise their powers 
of initiative, their common sense and their capacity for taking respon¬ 
sibility upon their shoulders. Officers may be tied down strictly by 
academic instruction and hard and fast rules, but when the time for 
real action comes, while mediocre men will be hampered and their 
powers of judgment warped by the necessity under which they feel to 
act strictly in conformity with the regulations, the superior man will 
rise to the occasion and will adapt his conduct of operations to the 
existing circumstances of the situation in which he finds himself 
involved. Not that rules nor instruction, even academic, are to be 
deprecated ; on the contrary, but as it is utterly impossible to establish 
regulations with such a wide margin as to be applicable to all cases, 
no two situations in warfare being exactly alike, so officers should be 
instructed, as German officers are, that while rules are laid down and 
formations prescribed for fighting under purely normal and theoretical 
conditions, they are by no means restricted from using their independent 
judgment and common sense according to the varying circumstances, 
which'arise in war. For instance, no sane man, in command of artillery 
would, I think, expose his limbers and teams by unlimbering in the firing 
position when faced by the guns of the enemy already in position, if by 
unlimbering a short distance in rear of it, he can do so under cover, 
and by running up his guns by hand expose only perhaps the muzzles 
