510 
GOLD MEDAL PRIZE ESSAY, 1879 , 
We must 
accept the 
past as a 
guide for! 
the future. 
Curved 
trajectories 
the great 
evil of 
artillery. 
Present 
R.M.L. 
field ord¬ 
nance. 
Require¬ 
ments of 
artillery. 
11. It may be said that it is now easy to point out the faults of a 
bygone artillery, and that it was as good as the state of the mechanical 
arts admitted. Quite so; but it is only by reflecting on its faults that 
we can be guided into adopting the proper methods of making our 
future field artillery as powerful as it should be. Moreover, many, 
even of those who should know better, do not recognise the importance 
of high velocity and flat trajectory, and the writer has heard it said 
more than once, “We don't want high velocity for field guns; 1200 f.s. 
or so is quite sufficient;" or again, “A 12-lb. shell will do everything 
we want in the field; we don't see the necessity for a heavier shell." 
Those who entertain such ideas cannot have the good of their service 
at heart, nor can they wish—as every artilleryman should do—to 
make it the principal arm in action. We are told so often, officially 
and otherwise, that the infantry is the principal arm in action under 
all circumstances, that it has been and will be so, that at last many 
of us begin to believe this to be an unalterable truth. It is exactly 
the reverse of what should be the case. That it is so now, no one can 
doubt; but that it will always continue to be so, the progress of artil¬ 
lery during the last year or two renders quite open to question. 
We must make every effort to improve. It would be a highly 
desirable achievement, if we could by some means do it, to have a field 
gun which could throw a 50 or 100-lb. shell with 1600 or 1700 f.s. 
Of course this is an impossibility, but it would be a very splendid 
result. We merely make this illustration to exemplify our meaning— 
viz., that no amount of progress that we can make is unnecessary or 
not absolutely required. The unanimous testimony of even unpro¬ 
fessional observers of actual fighting is, that the weak point of rifled 
guns hitherto has been the great angles of descent of their shells at 
any but very short ranges. We remember being taught that one 
great advantage possessed by rifled guns over smooth-bore was that a 
great saving of powder was effected. This was, perhaps, the strongest 
condemnation that could have been put in the same number of words. 
We must have flat trajectories in the field artillery of the future. 
12. We now come to the guns (9 and 16-prs.) at present in our 
service, and in speaking of them in must be understood we in no way 
wish to cast diseredit on their designers. They were, at the time of 
their introduction, the most powerful field guns in Europe, and were 
great improvements (especially the 16-prs.) on the guns which they 
superseded. 
The general introduction of shrapnel, time fuzes, and higher velo¬ 
cities made them much more generally formidable; but still the old 
faults of too large bore in proportion to the weight of the shell, and of 
comparatively low velocity remain. The system of rifling militates 
against the production of a good shrapnel, and the time fuzes, from 
the long time required for their preparation, &c., are unsuited for 
rapid fire or quickly varying ranges. 
18. In an article which appeared in the “Times" soon after the 
first manoeuvres, when the present guns had been lately introduced. 
