OKEHAMPTON EXPERIENCES, 1898 . 
79 
at Waterloo. Without taking up your time by quoting any particular battles, as 
I should be quite ready to do and have done elsewhere, I may say that the same 
story has to be told again and again since his time. I think we must all see that 
the conditions of modern war make it a matter of more paramount importance 
with regard to the general victory-winning power of artillery than it was in 
Napoleon’s time ; because, whereas in the days of Napoleon the one purpose that he 
had was to mass, to concentrate, to pour in overwhelming masses of infantry on 
to a point that he wanted to seize, practically that is in our time impossible. 
You may mass your infantry, and as long as they are exposed to fire by an enemy 
in adequate strength and untouched by artillery the massing them simply means 
increasing the target and not increasing the fire. So far as I know the only 
means by which, except in night fighting, concentrated force can in our time be 
made to tell at the decisive point is by bringing to bear an overwhelming power 
of artillery ; and, therefore, it is on us that depends the decisive question of 
the future in winning a battle. Therefore this is a most serious question for 
every gunner to consider. 
Those are my propositions. Turning now to the reply to them, I cannot 
admit that the question has been dealt with in Major White’s paper in a way to 
bring victory in future. Tor, in the first place, I may say that in all the 
earlier part of his paper Major White appears to suppose that we have proposed 
to concentrate our fire from the moment that we come into action on a particular 
point. I do not think that any of us who regard concentration as the one 
decisive mode of artillery action would for a moment think anything of the kind. 
I cannot conceive how it should be supposed that the men we have now at Aider- 
shot are likely to be unaware of the fact that it is much more easy for a simple 
battery to range than for a number of batteries ; and, as it is always desirable to 
have your ranges found for you over as large an area as possible, certainly during 
the period of ranging, we should employ our batteries in ranging on as many 
different points as possible. It never occurred to me that that had anything to 
do with the question of concentration of artillery fire. What I maintain to be des¬ 
tructive of the whole possibility of the use of artillery is this phrase that Major White 
uses with regard to it. He has spoken of the concentration after the range has been 
found, or as many ranges as possible, and he says, “ It is my firm belief that to 
attempt the operation at this stage will be to throw away the action altogether.” 
Now this is based on the assumption that unless the whole of the enemy’s artil¬ 
lery is kept under fire gun for gun you will suffer so terribly from the fact that a 
certain portion of his guns are not fired at that your condition will be hopeless. 
Therefore by distributing or, as I should say, dispersing your fire all along the 
line you must first overcome his fire before you can concentrate at all. 
I say that no authority, German, Trench, or other, will persuade me that that 
is anything else but an absolute violation of the whole experience of war; that it 
means simply that you are depriving yourself of the opportunity of producing 
the decisive result at the decisive time, which can only be gained in that, as in 
all other warlike operations, by gaining over for the decisive point the balance of 
advantage, by reducing the strength which you employ at those points where 
nothing very decisive can occur. 
The very art in such a matter consists in so choosing your ground and dis¬ 
tributing your troops on it that nothing very decisive can happen in those parts 
of the fight where you leave the enemy to do his worst. 
I have said elsewhere that I believe that in almost all conditions it is possible 
for you to concentrate a very large mass of your artillery fire without exposing 
yourself to that use of gun for gun by the enemy, which Major White assumes 
to be inevitable ; that you can in almost all cases place your guns in what I call 
a position of avoidance as regards that portion of the enemy with whom you do 
not wish to deal. That was what was actually done at the battle of Gravelotte 
