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THE TECHNICAL TRAINING OF OFFICERS 
IN 
GARRISON ARTILLERY. 
BY 
CAPTAIN A. W. PACK-BERESFORD, R.F.A. 
WHEN THE STRONG MAN ARMED KEEPETH HIS PALACE, 
HIS GOODS ARE IN PEACE.” 
DUNCAN” COMMENDED ESSAY, 1899. 
B EFORE suggesting a new system of training for the Garrison 
Artillery, it is well to consider, whether the present system is 
Present a good one, and then to see how it can be bettered. 
System. At once we are met by a difficulty. 
There does not appear to be any logical system of training and it 
is a matter of accident whether the officers of the Garrison Artillery 
get any training at all, beyond the general knowledge which they are 
bound to pick up in their service companies. When the young officers 
leave the Royal Military Academy it is a mere chance what happens 
to them. Some go to the Field Artillery, and the others are taken 
apparently at random and scattered throughout the world. 
A few are quartered at home. Some go to the large fortresses at 
Gibraltar and Malta, others are sent out to small Colonial stations. 
They go out just at an age when they are most susceptible to the in¬ 
fluence of their surroundings, and the two or three years which follow 
have an immense effect in forming their chaiacters and determining 
their future. 
Defects. It is not at all an unusual <hmg to find a company 
containing nothing but 2nd Lieutenants, possibly without a captain. 
They have to try as well as they can to sift right methods from wrong 
and to discover the ways of the service. Perhaps they work out their 
own salvation, it is more likely that they do not. 
Sometimes they are sent to a station in an out-of-the-way part of 
9 VOL XXVI. 
