OKEHAMPTON EXPERIENCES, 1893 . 
in order to determine what your action ought to be you must go to the history 
of battles to find out what is going to happen in battle. 
2. All of us at Okehampton want to make as many hits as possible on the 
targets. In order to obtain as many hits as we can in competition we must 
spread or “ distribute 55 our fire along the targets—-on that there is no difference 
of opinion whatever. 
3. What we have to consider in war is not the effect only or even chiefly of 
the shells that hit. It is all important to us whether the shells that do not hit 
shall increase the moral effect of those that do, or, on the contrary, greatly 
diminish their moral effect. 
4. Look at Major Hughes 5 figures as given here. They lead exactly to the 
same conclusion that I had come to before, namely, that under the favourable 
circumstances of peace practice one shell represents about one man hit by a 
bullet. That is a very small proportion for the number of bullets flying through 
the air. I say that what we want to do is to make those 176 bullets 1 per shell 
that are flying through the air and hitting nobody for everyone that does hit tell 
on our side instead of against us. 
5. The inevitable result of a fire, spread as we at Okehampton spread it over 
our targets, is that you, if you are exposed to it, have plenty of time to observe 
how comparatively few shells do produce destructive effect; therefore, when a 
shell falls and kills a number of men or horses, as I have seen it do, when under 
such a spread fire, you have plenty of time to calculate that that incident is of 
rare occurrence, and it will be a long time before it happens again. 
6. On the other hand, if shell after shell is pouring over the place • if con¬ 
tinually, because of the concentrated fire upon it, destruction is being produced, 
then every shell that is in the air, even though it is in fact harmless, has the 
moral effect on the men of being a shell that is possibly going to produce that 
disaster which they see before them caused by the shells that have struck and are 
striking. 
7. I have spoken again and again to men who have been under artillery fire, 
and I have never met anybody who had been in that position who did not agree 
with me that that was the important point of the whole matter. Because never 
in war is your decisive effect, is the victory winning effect, to be fairly estimated 
by counting the number of men you kill somewhere or other. 
8. In far the greater number of cases where there has been any fair stand up 
fight at all and not a mere massacre, it is the victorious army that has up to the 
moment of victory lost more men than the one that is ultimately beaten. When 
the victory is gained then, of course, the tables are turned, and the result is the 
other way. But you cannot calculate, as you would at Okehampton, simply hit 
by hit what the effect of what you are doing is. 
9. So far from agreeing with Major Hughes that the practical result of our 
discussion is, as he says, that we are brought to the artillery duel as the one 
point upon which any difference exists, I say that the point which is here raised 
of the distribution in the sense of that spreading of artillery fire, which is suit¬ 
able against targets, being necessary against artillery in battle, involves the whole 
question whether for any purpose whatever we can employ our artillery in pro¬ 
ducing the decisive effect at the decisive point at the decisive time; and that I 
take it is the metier of artillery under all circumstances and always. 
10. The dictum of Napoleon that he who suddenly and unknown to the 
enemy brings an overwhelming fire of artillery to bear upon the decisive point at 
the decisive time wins the day, covers all that long period of war which ended 
1 Assuming that one man on an average is hit per shell, it follows that as there are 177 bullets 
in each shrapnel shell the proportion of bullets that do not hit to those that do is as 176 : 1. 
Therefore, I say that in attempting to regulate our fire only with regard to the one that hits we 
ignore the importance of Hfth °f our whole fire, i,e. } enormously the greater part of it. 
