364 COMMENDED Essay, 1895. 
ment some might be found with a knowledge of signalling. 
VOLUNTEERS. 
The Volunteers being only able to count on 4 whole working days 
during their week of training, and the last 2 of these being required 
by the Fire Commander, there remain only 2 days in which to bring 
themselves up to the point reached by the Militia on the completion of 
the programme sketched above. For this to be possible a great part 
of the programme, that is to say stages A and B of it, must have been 
completed beforehand. Facilities for doing so would no doubt have 
been given to companies quartered: near the fortress, but it could 
hardly be expected of the more distant ones, which would as a rule be 
provided at their stations with nothing more modern, to carry out 
their preparatory training, than 64-prs. (or possibly. 8.B. guns) on 
standing carriages. ‘he time would be more profitably spent indeed 
by these latter companies if the whole week were devoted to the above 
mentioned programme, at all events during the first year of their 
training at the fortress. 
For the Companies more fortunately situated for carrying out their 
preparatory drill there would be one day for working by groups and 
one day for manning the Battery before they would be required by the 
Fire Commander. 
It is difficult to see how any practice can be included in the 
programme without sacrificing some essential part of it, in the case of 
a Corps new to the work. Subsequently no doubt, when it had made 
sufficient progress, practice would be the best shape in which instruc- 
tion in the manning of a Battery could be given. 
As the Officers would be required on parade with their men, the 
could not receive separate instruction, as in the case of the Militia 
Officers, unless extra time were given to it. The best plan would seem 
to be for them to fall in half or three-quarters of an hour before 
their men on each occasion for a lecture to be delivered to them on the 
work to be done during that parade. 
The same course should be pursued by the Volunteers as by the 
Militia to provide assistants to specialists and to make the Corps 
independent in all respects as far as possible. As it is now intended 
to furnish each Volunteer Corps with a Depression Range-finding 
instrument for instructional purposes, operators can be trained during 
the year, if a knowledge of the instrument is made a compulsory 
qualification for appomtment to the Permanent Staff. But little 
progress could be made in a week in Position-finding ; but perhaps 
men might be found in a Volunteer Corps with sufficient leisure, and 
at the same time with an aptitude for the work, who would be willing 
to give the necessary time for going through a special course of 
Position-finding for the sake of supplying this want in their Corps. 
If some of the N.C. Officers of the Permanent Staff understood 
signalling, there would be no difficulty in a Brigade of Volunteer 
Artillery providing itself with the requisite number of signallers, who 
