OKEHAMPTON, 1895. 79 
to us now to be going back into the dark ages to think of men 
purposely setting their sights wrong; but I was amused this year 
by a little incident which makes me suspect that in that respect at any 
rate we are ahead of the infantry. A Battery Commander obviously 
over-estimated the range; it was 900 and he gave 2000, One of 
the “Course Officers”? immediately turned to me and said “ But, 
of course, they won’t set their sights at that,” and I do not think he 
believed me when I said that they certainly would. In 1890 at last 
we read “the practice shows marked improvement, especially in the 
direction of fire discipline,” while the rate of fire has increased by 42 per 
cent. with no falling offin accuracy. Officers were waking up to the 
necessity of really drilling their batteries for practice, and not relegating 
all gun drill to afternoon parades under the subaltern on duty. And 
the 1891 instructions state that “ batteries can and must be exercised 
in the whole system of ranging and fire discipline as a drill.” 
Commandants are ordered to inspect batteries on arrival, and Licut.- 
Colonels are made responsible that their preliminary training has been 
“systematic and sufficient.” The improvement once started was steady 
—again we read after the practice “This year shows a great advance 
in fire discipline” but that the standard was scarcely what ours is may 
be inferred, for, in spite of this great.advance, “the practice of Nos. 1 
ordering their guns to be fired without any command from “ Section 
Commanders ” is only “ not so prevalent as heretofore.” Things had, 
however, got so far that in this year’s Okehampton lecture the 
subject of having more than one layer was mooted, and though a 
Commanding Officer declared that at Woolwich such a thing was 
“almost an impossibility’ the idea was started and in 1892 the 
eighteen layers have become an accomplished fact. In 1893 the 
examination of layers and fuze-setters, which had been instituted at 
Okehampton in 1889—with somewhat startling results—was ordered 
for all camps. And last year, I am thankful to say, that the state of 
training arrived at allowed of the elimination from the “instructions ”’ 
of all those elaborate directions for previous training which, though they 
had been dwindling steadily, still amounted to two pages in 1893—it 
being simply stated that the preliminary training must be “as com- 
plete as possible.’ Now that also has gone. This gradual dis- 
appearance of all instructions on that head is, I think, the most 
convincing proof of the change in training. 
ELEMENTARY PRACTICE. 
'o turn now to Hlementary Practice. What happened in 1888? 
The solemn farce was enacted of showing the results of mistakes by 
firing a gun with one wheel higher than another, with a damp cartridge 
and so forth. How well most of us here mustremember that “ducking ” 
of the cartridge in the centre of a ring of gaping gunners—and then the 
crowd collected to see the gun fired. Unfortunately the mistakes never 
** came off.” Next year we have got so far that “ officers are to be in- 
structed in the command of the battery,’ and the battery is to be 
accustomed to fire discipline, and it is very justly pointed out that this 
cannot be “ satisfactorily carried out unless the battery practises with 
11 
