974 ARTILLERY FROM AN INFANTRY OFFICER’S POINT OF VIEW. 
behind cover. The Lecturer has said that with the Germans now this fire is 
practically the rule and he has described to us the instruments used. They are 
in my opinion very interesting but very complicated; the French, I believe, have 
still more complicated ones, the Italians also and I daresay the other nations. 
What I want to assure officers and I have practised with these German instruments, 
is that our aiming posts will do all the work that the richt-fldche does very much 
more simply and accurately. But the question of what instruments you use is not 
important, we all know that under favourable circumstances you can make very 
accurate practice from behind cover. It is to the use of such practice on the 
battle-field that I believe there to be such strong objections as to render any 
general employment of it absolutely out of the question. To begin with, it is 
very rare to find ground where you can carry on the practice with more than a 
single battery. Besides that you cannot change your target without making all 
sorts of elaborate arrangements, you cannot concentrate your fire and you cannot 
fire at moving targets at all. Those are, to a certain extent, technical objections. 
There is a very much stronger one and that is the moral objection. If you train 
Field Artillery to consider firing from behind cover as “‘ practically the rule,” I be- 
lieve you will destroy the whole spirit of the arm and I cannot help thinking from 
what the Lecturer has said, that that is what is occurring to some extent at any 
rate in Germany. ‘The Lecturer says he has never seen in the manceuvres the 
German Field Artillery accompany the infantry in attack; he certainly read a 
letter from a distinguished German officer who pointed out that some persons, at 
any rate, considered that they should do so; but, if the Lecturer has never seen it 
done, it must be sufficiently rare aud if batteries do not do it at manceuvres, will 
they do it on service? In the Franco-German War there were many occasions 
where the artillery came up to very close ranges, not only for such special pur- 
poses as the Lecturer has mentioned. For instance, in the battle he has referred 
to (Worth) the batteries prepared the way for the assault of Elsasshausen by their 
fire at very close ranges, and then when the village was carried and the German 
infantry, as the official account admits, was absolutely unable to withstand the 
French counter attack, two batteries of Horse Artillery coming into action on the 
ground just won, stopped that attack with case. I know that I am not alone in 
thinking that such occasions will occur again, and I firmly believe that if in 
manceuvres you train batteries continually to use fire from behind cover, and to 
remain in their positions while the infantry advance when in war, occasions arise 
for their use at close quarters they will not be there. 
In conclusion, there is one question I should like to ask, the Lecturer has spoken 
about firing in tiers—sometimes two and three tiers—I should like to know 
whether the German artillery ever fire in tiers in reality at practice, or only with 
blank at manoeuvres. 
Masor H. C. Sciater.—Gentlemen, there was one point which the Lecturer 
dealt with for a considerable time and that was the question of long range 
infantry fire and the effect likely to be produced by infantry firing upon guns. I 
may mention that I was very much interested last year and the year before, in 
some small experiments instituted by Lord Wolseley, then commanding in Ireland, 
which took place at Glenbeigh in connection with this subject, from which we all 
got a great deal of instruction—both infantry and artillery. In Ireland there was 
at that time no infantry range upon which long range firing could take place, 
though that is being remedied now, whilst in England the ranges are few; and I 
would strongly urge that our artillery ranges should be utilised for combined 
field firing by infantry and artillery, and that a detachment of infantry should also 
be present during at least a portion of the period when gun practice is being 
carried on. ‘Their presence being utilised by firing at various ranges at targets 
