COMMENDED Essay, 1895. 3873 
Artillery and be maintained at war strength in the district to which it 
belongs. The recognition of this principle! is perhaps the greatest of 
all the advances made by the Garrison Artillery since the close of the 
Crimean War. ‘The idea is that, in every district, the Commanding 
Officer of Artillery should be responsible that, whether the companies 
in his command, be few or many, he should always have the skilled 
personnel, in full strength and proper proportions ready to his hand in 
case of war. It is assumed by regulation that a Commanding Officer 
can at a moment’s notice call into existence a living chain ready to 
transmit his orders from his command cell to the remotest outpost, and 
to execute them by pre-arranged and often rehearsed co-operation. 
Now, without doubt the more energetic the Commanding Officer, the 
more nearly will affairs approach to this ideal condition. But alas! 
there is no picture without a blemish. Excellent as is the theory of the 
District Hstablishments, it is subject to sundry drawbacks in practice. 
There is in the first place a want of elasticity in the whole plan. For 
example:—The establishment of a given district may have been fixed 
before all the works belonging to it were completed, and before the 
position-finding, electric lighting, and the telephone system belonging 
to it bad been installed. According to theory, no doubt, the specialist 
staff should have been augmented step by step as these adjuncts were 
brought into play, but we all know that such a course is practically 
impossible where affairs are concerned which depend upon annual 
estimates and Parliamentary votes. Somehow matters have a tendency 
to crystalise, and it may easily happen that a very modern fortification 
has already a very obsolete District Establishment. 
Another difficulty in connection with the District Establishment is 
the want of a completely satisfactory method of recruiting them, and of 
an exact standard of qualification for every one of their grades. Certain 
specialists are supplied from the Woolwich Arsenal and from the 
Schools of Instruction, but there is, to say the least of it, an element of 
vagueness in the mode of their selection, which makes it impossible for 
a Commanding Officer to place any great reliance upon their technical 
skill until he has had personal knowledge of what they can individually 
do, and what they cannot. On the other hand the majority of the 
specialists are drawn from the service companies quartered in the 
district, and are trained locally ; a system which works well only where 
the number of companies is in fair proportion to the number of 
specialists they have to find. 
Drawbacks of this kind are serious in proportion as the skilled labour 
is important, for just as one weak link in a chain enfeebles the whole, 
so the absence or incapacity of a single specialist may go far to 
depreciate the fighting value of the strongest combination of works and 
armament. An excitable or ill-taught position-finding operator would 
in action nullify the best manned group of the most powerful of our 
modern guns, and a bungling artificer might do incalculable mischief 
in half an hour. 
i No change in this respect has been made by recent orders associating D.E. men with Com- 
panies, since they remain localised. 
