ARTILLERY FROM AN INFANTRY OFFICER’S POINT OF VIEW. 271 
There is great difficulty in deducing from peace experiments what 
is likely to be the effect of fire in war, for here human nature has to 
be taken into consideration and this is a factor for which we cannot 
legislate. All experience teaches that only a very small per centage 
of the effect produced by a body of troops firing in peace can be 
expected in war, and that percentage will vary in proportion as the 
troops firing are well or badly disciplined. Whatever the above per 
centage is with infantry, it should be greater with artillery, who for 
many reasons are less influenced by the altered circumstances of the 
‘ease. This fact must be borne in mind in connection with the com- 
_parative effect of artillery and of infantry fire at more or less similar 
objects in peace. 
The following are, I think, among the chief points which strike an 
infantryman when first seeing artillery practice. Knowing how very 
easy it is with a rifle to fire to the right or to the left, infantrymen 
find it hard to believe that the lateral error of artillery is “nil”? and 
that the depth covered by shrapnel is as great as it is. Perhaps it is 
‘owing to this fact that we so often at manceuvres, and on field days see 
infantry advancing in fours within easy artillery range. 
Again an infantryman is apt to forget the great difficulty, which 
artillery will undoubtedly have in ranging in war, and the enormous 
difference which the ground on which shell burst makes to artillery in 
finding their range, and consequently an infantryman is also apt 
to forget the necessity (insisted on in the drill-book) for infantry in 
their advance to avoid prominent objects on which artillery find it easy 
to range. On this point I should like to remark that the smoke- 
making substance in the German shell which makes the smoke 
hang together after the shell has burst, when fired either with 
time or percussion fuze, must immensely facilitate ranging on difficult 
ground. 
In considering artillery questions an infantryman is also apt to for- 
get the difficulty which artillery will have in observing the effect of 
their own fire at long ranges, and also their difficulty in distinguishing 
their own from the enemy’s troops, and in this respect he is inclined to 
attribute to them powers of vision and of discrimination, which are 
more than human. : | 
Modern guns firing shrapnel have never yet had an opportunity of 
showing what they can do on a battle-field, and one of the first sur- 
prises of the next European war will be that we shall hear that artillery, 
under favourable conditions, have within a quarter of an hour swept 
away half an army corps. 
In conclusion I have only to thank you for the kind manner in which 
you have listened to me and to assure you that if I, an infantryman, 
have said that I see a moat in my brother’s eye, that I am perfectly 
aware that there is a beam in my own. 
