550 
SKILL-AT-ARMS. 
The committee, being established as an immediate safeguard against 
irrational change, might then proceed to review our whole situation, in 
order to see what recommendations of their own they could submit. 
There is much waiting to be done. In material, it would be their duty 
to get the 12 r pounder made a proper field gun by being made more 
effective at short ranges; and to get a proper gun for those batteries 
of Horse Artillery that are to be brigaded with Cavalry. They ought 
to consider the whole question of ammunition with reg'ard to battle and 
short ranges; what reliance can justly be placed on time fuzes in battle; 
whether we have enough case; whether we ought to have common shell 
to burst and carry destruction instead of the dummy shell we have ; 
whether we ought to have some segment shell; whether it would not 
be better to have more common shell, or more common and segment 
shell together than shrapnel; whether we ought to have any shrapnel; 
and whether it is not of more importance than anything else to have 
proper common shell, or segment shell, that will burst with percussion 
fuze at all ranges from the range of case. They ought to get it for¬ 
bidden by order to pass a cart horse into Horse or Field Artillery. 
They might consider the question of pole-draught. In drill, they 
might give us a new brigade drill, up to our present knowledge of drill, 
and legitimating the gallop of Field Artillery in field movements. In 
tactics, divesting their minds of the idea of hiding from the enemy, 
and not making a selection from foreign Regulation and literature, 
they might re-write Chapter V., Volume II., and make it much shorter 
by not putting in anything not wanted. They might especially con¬ 
sider whether it is advisable to add to our plan of interchanging the 
gun and wagon-limbers of guns in action any scheme for the supply 
of ammunition in a first position ; whether, in war, any advantage 
would be gained if the guns could be made more ready to advance; 
what advantage would be gained by sending away the gun-limbers to 
the line of wagons; and whether any advantage of readiness to advance 
which might be gained would not be counterbalanced or outweighed 
by the disadvantage of filling up the intervals, making Nos. 4 cross 
the intervals and have further to go, bringing up more carriages on 
coming into action, and making more work in the battery. 
Guernsey, 
13th June, 1892. 
