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OKEHAMPTON EXPERIENCES, 1893 . 
against battery. For ranging purposes undoubtedly we were all agreed, but 
when it came to the point afterwards as to whether we should concentrate I can 
only say that the artillery drill-book recently issued decides strongly for concen¬ 
tration, not for gun for gun use of fire; that it has been sent round to every 
artillery officer in authority in England, India, and all over the world, and that it 
has been accepted without any demur. That must outweigh the casual impres¬ 
sions of conversations formed even by so excellent a reporter as Major Hughes. 
I can answer for it that those whom I have spoken to both among Brigade 
Division Commanders and to Battery Commanders who were at Okehampton this 
year believed firmly in the value of concentration after ranging, and one would 
have liked to ask any who expressed a contrary opinion whether they were speaking 
of targets at Okehampton or war. 
Major W. L. White. —I quite agree- with Colonel Maurice, that this is 
the right place in which to thrash out this question of concentration and dis¬ 
tribution of fire ; it was for that purpose that I came here to-night, in the hope 
that we should have an opportunity of doing so. To begin with, we do not 
seem to be at one upon the meaning of the word “ distribution.’ 5 As I believe 
I am guilty of introducing it into the drill-book (first of all into a paper in the 
Institution “ Proceedings ”) I may say that I do not use it in any different sense 
from what I have always understood it in the service. In describing a campaign 
(and nobody is more competent to do so than Colonel Maurice), I am sure if he 
were giving a short description of it he would say, “ The following was the dis¬ 
tribution of the troops on a certain date, 55 or in describing an incident of a 
battle-field he would use the word in the same sense Now that might not mean 
dispersion ; it might mean, on the contrary, intense concentration. Therefore to 
say that “ distribution 55 means “ dispersion 55 is taking the word in a sense that 
is not military. We have used the word in a military sense for a long time, and 
I do not see why it should not continue to be so used. 
Colonel J. E. Maurice, c.b. —Do you adhere to the phrase that the artillery 
must be kept gun for gun firing at the enemy after the range has been taken ? If 
you mean that by “ distribution, 55 that is what I call “ dispersion. 55 The use of 
the word to which you are now referring I have already admitted to be a most 
valuable one. 1 
Major W. L. White —Then one great difficulty has been done away with. 
What I still adhere to is this (they are not my own views ; they are given at 
secondhand from all the authorities I have been able to hunt up from foreign 
sources) that you must maintain fire over the whole front of the enemy bearing 
upon you until you attain superiority, and then you can afford to concentrate 
against individual points. I have lately been at the trouble to hunt up every 
drill-book I could lay hands upon, and a great number of works upon artillery 
fire, and that was the gist of the views expressed in them. If you have superiority 
of numbers you can have technical concentration at certain points from the 
commencement. In reading about the technicalities of war I would ask you to 
be careful. When you read of the concentration of huge masses of guns as that 
of the Germans at the battle of Gravelotte, the concentration of fire in that case was 
not a technical concentration, it was not like playing a garden engine up and down a 
line of opposing batteries, leaving some alone. We know this, because we have 
1 This remark referred to the following note printed with the paper to which Major White 
originally replied —“ The term ‘distribution’ is susceptible, to two different meanings. In our 
1893 Drill-Book it is used to imply the regulated employment of the artillery of an army for such 
tactical purposes as circumstances demand. Obviously in that sense 'it is a very useful word. 
The word has, however, been also used to cover a notion that we ought from the beginning of an 
action to take care that none of the enemy can fire upon us without our firing upon them. It is 
this notion which it is my object to combat in setting ‘ concentration of fire ’ in contrast with 
‘ distribution,’ or what is in this sense the same thing ‘ dispersion of fire.’ ”— United Service 
Magazine , April, 1893, p. 691 .—J.F.M. 
