FIELD ARTILLERY FIRE. 
397 
rather downwards on to the desk than forward into the room, and thus 
loses much of its power of compelling the attention. 
Lectures to recruits should never be long, quarter-of-an-hour to 
twenty minutes at the outside, and half-an-hour for non-commissioned 
officers, is quite as long as their minds can be kept on the stretch for 
the reception of new ideas. The lecture should be immediately fol¬ 
lowed by a close catechising to make sure that every point has been 
properly set before them in language that they can understand. 
CHAPTER XI. 
Foreign Artilleries. 
It would be impossible within the limits of this work, as well as 
useless to the great majority of readers, to attempt to fully describe 
all the Field Artillery of Foreign Powers ; only the most useful infor¬ 
mation, therefore, is given, and those points where the equipment 
shows that foreign opinions are at variance with our own. The 
principle points of interest are given in the table on page 401. 
Nomenclature. 
It will be noted that calibres, from which the guns are called, are 
given in centimetres, except those of the French guns, which are given 
in millimetres. The French guns are actually of 80 and 90 millimetres 
respectively, the others vary, in the case of the 9 cm guns, from 85 to 
87 millimetres, and are called 9 cm on the same principle that our 
12J-pr. is called a 12-pr. 
Breech Action. 
With the exception of the French and ourselves, who use the inter¬ 
rupted screw breech block and the Du Bange system of obturation, 
other nations have adopted the Krupp cylindro-prismatic wedge, or a 
modification of it, with the Broadwell ring obturator; a most excellent 
form of breech action, simple and strong, though, like our own, not 
perfectly immaculate in respect of jamming and minor accidents, 
which, however, when they do occur, are not vaunted abroad; for it 
never does to make a man mistrust his weapon. 
Calibre. 
It will be seen that the majority of the Powers have adopted a gun 
of the same calibre for both Horse and Field Artillery, which cannot 
fail to simplify the supply of ammunition from the Reserves. The 
Austrians have, I believe, recently adopted a 9 cm gun for their Horse 
Artillery instead of the 8 cm gun shown in the table p. 401. 
