Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/384

Rh 360 W A K [TACTICS. way may have all the time been learning to do just what will injure it for war service. Nothing is more note worthy throughout the 1870 campaign than the extraordi nary superiority of the German artillery over the French. There were no doubt certain technical reasons for this ; but by far the most important reasons were these: (1) the German batteries had been trained habitually so to co operate that a French battery almost always found itself opposed to a German brigade of six batteries when it came to fighting; and (2) at all their manoeuvres the Germans had been training for war, while the French artillery had not. The German artillery had never fired off a gun which had not been properly laid at an assigned object, with the range determined, the nature of the projectile declared, and the fuse to burst the shell so far fixed that, had it been necessary actually to fire in earnest, every man would have gone through an almost exactly similar ex perience. The French, on the other hand, had piqued themselves on their dashing battery manoeuvres, and had been content to fire off a blank cartridge as rapidly as possible, no matter how the gun was laid, or what would have happened about the shell. The same two schools at this moment exist among British artillery officers. The unfortunate tendency at pre sent is for the officer commanding a battery who tells his subalterns, &quot; Never mind how you fire ; get off a puff of smoke, just to show where you are,&quot; to seem much smarter than the man who insists upon every gun being properly laid at an assigned object, and on having every possible condition fulfilled as it would be in war. The general who at a mile s distance sees the two puffs of smoke can not tell the difference, though, if he rode into the battery which has so promptly puffed off its smoke, he would prob ably find that one gun was inclined high in air and the next shooting into the ground ten paces in front of the muzzle. It is not too much to say that this latter battery has been in every respect acquiring inefficiency by the day s work. It will be slow when it comes to action, be cause the men have never been trained to be as quick as the circumstances of action permit, have acquired no prac tice in rapidity under those conditions. It will have ac quired no practice in actual shooting except its few annual shots on the practice ground, which are sure with it to have been regarded as a most inconvenient interruption to the show drill and show manoeuvres on which it has been employed throughout the year. This is the point of artillery tactics without which everything else is utterly valueless. As Prince Kraft of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen puts it, &quot; The artillery must in the first place hit, in the second place hit, and in the third place hit&quot; It depends far more in England upon generals com manding districts and divisions and on their staffs than upon artillery officers whether this result is attained or not. It is almost impossible for the most zealous artillery officer to keep up the confidence and spirits of his battery and to keep their work to the proper level if on every occasion they find that, because he insists on work being properly done, some other battery which is amusing itself with sham firing gets all the credit of superior smartness. The matter is therefore vital to the efficiency of this arm of the service. The infantry and cavalry will find in action that they rely on the support of a broken reed if the artillery generally has not brought the most efficient technical and practice-ground work into the closest relation with field manoeuvring. Given that this has been done in the sense here described, Prince Kraft s next condition may be briefly stated, because its importance will be easily understood. &quot; It must next be in a condition to come into position at the right moment, and, with this object it must practise itself in getting over distances of many miles, and even forced marches of a day or so, at rapid pace. If,&quot; he adds, 1 &quot; it can satisfy these claims, it will give us every thing which is needed as to its fitness for employment in battle.&quot; So far we have spoken of conditions in which the tacti- Massed cal necessities of modern artillery are very similar to those artillery of modern infantry. In the next point the contrast is as sharp as the analogy was close in the former instance. Infantry, as we have seen, once committed to a fight, is be yond the control of all officers not actually leading them at the time. Artillery under all but the rarest circum stances can be almost as easily moved from one point to another of a battle-field out of action in which it is fiercely engaged as if it were not employed in firing at all. There fore the rule is now accepted in all armies that every gun that can be employed should as soon as possible be brought to bear on the enemy. The shorter time artillery is limbered up and the longer it is employed in action the more effec tive is its work. With a very large army Prince Kraft, whose authority on such a subject is probably the highest we have, makes a rather hesitating exception in this sense that ordinarily the commander-in-chief of a very large army will have whole army corps designed for a particular work, usually for striking at the decisive point of a field of battle. With these their own artillery will naturally move. But so far as artillery is available on any part of a field of action, even including that of divisions and army corps kept back from the actual fight, as long as these are stationary, every possible gun will be pushed forward. The altogether overwhelming effect of a concentrated and massed artillery fire is so enormous that whatever tends to increase the number of guns employed tends to give that superiority over the enemy s artillery which it is one of a general s first objects to secure. Ordinarily a battle will now begin by artillery opening fire at a range which is fixed by the necessity of the attack ing artillery not exposing itself during the time that it is coming up to the enemy s effective fire with shrapnel shell. This is reckoned at about 3800 yards. From that point the artillery, as soon as it has been able sufficiently to occupy the fire of the enemy to make further advance possible, pushes in to a distance of from 2200 yards to 2700 yards. Infantry in the meantime will have been pushed on sufficiently to protect the ground thus to be occupied by the artillery from direct attacks from the enemy. At this point an artillery duel is practically the certain beginning of the regular battle. The artillery will fire at any of the other arms as soon as it is able to bring any effective fire to bear on them. It is no easy matter for infantry to attack other infantry until the artillery has prepared the way for them by a heavy fire. But the artillery will hardly ever be able to do this until it has established such an ascendency over the enemy s artillery that the latter is either silenced or at least tern porarily withdrawn. No matter how great the mass of artillery that is Regulation gathered together, Prince Kraft, basing his conclusions battery upon the soundest reasoning, condemns altogether the ie- independent fire of individual guns within a battery, and, unless exceptionally for the purpose of ascertaining a range, all salvoes of artillery by batteries or otherwise. Nothing is gained in point of the number of shell that can be thrown in a given time by firing battery salvoes in stead of firing steadily gun by gun from the flank of a battery. After a salvo an interval of from 36 to 48 seconds at least is required before another can be fired. 1 We quote from his correspondent s summary of his views, and from the translation given by Major Walford, E.A. These words occur in the 17th letter, Royal Artillery Institution Proceedings, August 1887, p. 187.