414 
TRAINING OF VOLUNTEER ARTILLERY. 
For purposes of instruction and drill men can be classified under 
four beads: 
(1.) Recruits. 
(2.) Men in tbeir 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year's service. 
(3.) Men of over four years' service. 
(4.) Men who can and do attend very regularly and on nearly 
every drill night throughout the year. 
It stands to reason, that there will be a great difference in the at¬ 
tainments of the men in these different classes; the “ recruit" will 
have little or no knowledge; those in class (2), taken as a whole, will 
show a very fair knowledge, and probably are the most efficient men 
in the Corps, for if well grounded during the first two years, they 
should be well able to keep up their knowledge for a year or two, and 
pick up any alterations in the drill which may take place; men in class 
(3) of whom there would probably be a considerable number in every 
Corps, putting in nine or a few more than nine drills, unless specially 
considered on drill nights, can hardly be expected to be very perfect 
gunners, they will have partly forgotten what they learnt as recruits, 
many alterations in the drill will take place, which they have little time 
to learn, and also the energy they possessed and the anxiety they had, 
as recruits, to be smart gunners, will in many cases, have diminished 
considerably. 
Class (4) consists of men of varied length of service and usually fur¬ 
nishes the gun-layers, signallers, dial numbers, and such specialists as 
the Volunteer Artillery may be expected to find, but for the best re¬ 
sults to be obtained, these men should receive individual attention. 
I might, perhaps, add a 5th class, viz., Officers and Sergeants, who, 
in my opinion, require every winter a special course of instruction, to 
keep their knowledge up to the standard required for “ Proficiency." 
It is clear, therefore, that men from these various classes cannot, 
with advantage, be drilled together, for if they are, there can be little 
systematic training, and no graduated course of instruction; but how 
is this to be avoided ? It seems almost impossible. As a rule, there is 
but one Sergt.-Instructor of the permanent staff, available for drill, 
and perhaps a Volunteer Sergeant, who may be a man well up in his 
work, but who can hardly be looked upon as an Instructor in the same 
sense as a member of the permanent staff. To tell off different drill 
nights to the various classes is, in my opinion, impossible, the night 
that suits one man is the night on which another cannot attend, and 
so on; it is sometimes an advantage to have a separate drill night for 
recruits, but even then they can hardly be prohibited from attending 
on other drill nights : and supposing that there was no dearth of In¬ 
structors, it is not likely that there would be enough men in each class 
to enable them to form separate drill squads. 
In general then, I think we find that the majority of the men are 
drilled* together, irrespective of their knowledge, some being hurried 
along and obtaining a very imperfect knowledge of elementary details, 
and others never getting beyond a certain point, thereby becoming dis¬ 
couraged and disheartened. 
