236 CO-OPERATION BETWEEN GUNS AND CAVALRY. 
these new batteries, I believe we are going to have three, and they will also show 
I believe an increase of seven batteries to the Field Artillery (applause). 
The only other point to which I would allude is the question of escort. Per- 
sonally I must say that I attach great importance to the advantage of an escort. 
I cannot believe myself that an officer in the position of Commander of Horse 
Artillery in action ought to be expected to have the least regard to his own safety. 
He has to watch the course of the fight, and we have just been shown by examples 
from history how important it is for him todo that. He has to consider the range 
and effect of his fire and all that sort of thing, and it is impossible for him to do 
that properly if at the same time he is looking after the safety of his battery. 
Anybody who has ever seen a cavalry engagement at manceuvres—-the dust, the 
general confusion, and the speed at which the horses go—will I think agree with 
me that if the battery is left to the chance of the nearest cavalry officer protecting 
it its protection will be a very bad one. For that reason I certainly advocate an 
escort, though a small one. In conclusion I have to thank the lecturer for his 
most interesting and most instructive lecture. 
Tun CiarirMAN.—The Adjutant-General touched just now on a point which 
is of very great interest to me, about the greater training that is required. I do 
not know that we shall ever get the best results until all three branches of the 
service go back to something which in this regiment you used to do; I am afraid 
it is now only done in certain batteries. You used to give a subaltern a very 
thorough instruction in what every driver and every gunner has to do. I will not say 
what I think of you now, because you all know that I think very highly of you; 
but 30 years ago I thought a great deal of your superiority over the two other 
branches, which arose from the same system. It was a great point too in the 
navy, 7.¢., that every subaltern had to do everything that has to be done by a 
second class boy, a first class boy, an ordinary seaman and an able seaman ; and I 
should like to see you go back (and I am going to say the same about the infantry 
and the cavalry) to what you did when probably General Stirling joined—that 
every subaltern before dismissal from drill should ride in the lead, in the centre, 
in the wheel, and go downhill, he will then appreciate exactly what 39 cwt. is 
behind. him, and especially on a straight-shouldered horse! In the same way I 
should like to see every cavalry officer ride in the rear-rank, and in the dustiest 
part of the Long Valley, and then he will appreciate really what a trial a rear-rank 
man undergoes. In the time I have been at Aldershot I have seen a most 
enthusiastic subaltern in the infantry drive a man into insubordination, and we 
should have had a very bad case but that a sergeant stepped up and put his hand 
on the man’s mouth, because the boy was trying to insist on this man doubling in 
marching-order, on a very hot day. . 
Of course the Adjutant-General was speaking in a higher sense just now of 
trying to get a more thorough training and a more thorough appreciation on the 
part of the cavalry of what artillery can and ought to do, and a more thorough 
appreciation on the part of gunners than they really have, not so much of the 
cavalry but of the object in view, that they are not there to fire off their own guns 
at all, unless those guns are going really to help the cavalry to gain the victory. 
Unfortunately for myself I look back a good many years, but it is a very great 
pleasure to me when I think what the feeling is amongst you all here to-night. 
Ihave fortunately had the happiness of knowing a great many of you from my 
having been at Aldershot. When I look back to the time when I began my 
service, the only book that existed for a boy who wanted to know anything about 
his work was a morocco-covered brown-backed book, which no doubt you know— 
“ Lefroy’s Handbook for Field Service.” I remember having to do a report on 
the enemy’s position ; I did not know at all how to do it, and I turned to the book 
in my first trouble to try and gain, on service, what I ought to have learnt, of 
