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Badges of rank and names of regiments should be in worsted, worked on the collar, where they could be easily seen. * With khaki, buttons should be bronzed and not worn bright.

Boots.

Boots should be either nailed at the heels and toes or have steel tips. The nailing, I think, is the best, as it prevents slipping on the dry grass. A supply of Blakey's boot patents should always be kept by the regimental shoemakers for hasty repairs.

For coolness and comfort I found nothing to beat the R. A. Gaiters or putties. mountain battery gaiter which laces up the front. This is a capital marching gaiter, and will turn spear grass, which the putty won't; besides, it never comes down or gets too tight, whilst the putty often does both."

Give the soldier a good loose coat with champagne-bottle shape The great coat. sleeves, and then he can put it on over everything and be able to use his rifle at the same time without bursting the arms out of the sleeves. Much more does the soldier require a good lot of pockets.

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The balaclava cap and a khaki-colored thick jersey or Cardigan waistcoat with long sleeves should be served out as articles of clothing to every soldier; they are easily carried and are very useful to slip on when the sun goes down. The soldier's clasp knife is useful, but do give him a tin opener.

Knife, fork, and spoon.

A combination knife and fork should be issued to all men, the spoons either being combined or served out separately. The "dessert-spoon" size is the most suitable for all-round use. Enameled cups were carried by all ranks, from Lord Roberts downward, in every case where they were procurable.

To be worn on the person of the soldier: Helmet, khaki drill coat, corduroy breeches, gaiters or putties, boots, worsted socks, drawers, flannel shirt, belt or braces, clasp knife on belt, cholera belt, gloves (in cold weather).

To be carried by the soldier: * * * Field glasses (by officers and sergeants).

EXTRACTS FROM SOME NOTES ON THE LESSONS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR.

[By a REGIMENTAL OFFICER. Published in the United Service Magazine for April, 1901.]

I learnt my soldiering in India and am naturally somewhat prejudiced in favor of what I may call the practical as opposed to the theoretical school of soldiering. Wrinkle No. 1: The absolute necessity of good eyesight, and that artillery officers should use telescopes. * *

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Wrinkle No. 2: Have nothing bright about your clothing or equipment on service.

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Wrinkle No. 3: That infantry, carefully handled, can put guns out of action if they can get within rifle fire.

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We had always to be prepared as well for fire from both flanks and in some cases from the rear as well.

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And I found a telescope invaluable for locating these snipers, who were easily silenced once their locality was discovered.

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But it should be rendered practically impossible for the enemy to fire, even from behind loopholed walls, before the frontal attack is delivered.

Keep 10 paces' interval between men when under fire and do not worry with orders; let them work forward and fire independently, keeping a general alignment. * *

*

Officers and section commanders should be in the extended line dressed the same as the men, and not careering valiantly 50 yards in front.

* * *

If gun fire is opened on your men it is generally advisable to lie quiet for a bit; if the men begin to run about for better cover it only draws more fire. * *

*

Shell fire is alarming, but does little damage. Shrapnel is only dangerous when in the open. * * * They must bring up ammunition at the first cover reached, by hand, if necessary, and at all costs if firing has proceeded for some time.

Entrench and build sangars if halted even for a short time. Never rest until the men have got cover. Always be prepared for rifle or gun fire from any side.

* * *

The pull-off and the sighting of the Mauser appear to be distinctly superior to ours, and unless the clip system has defects I know nothing of, there is no question in my mind that to load with five cartridges instead of one, with the same amount of trouble and risk, is a decided advantage. * * * Intensity of fire is what we must look to once an object to fire at has been given. * * *

Judging distance, skirmishing and attack practices, etc., to take the place of the endless barrack-square drills.

Individual action to be encouraged at all times, and the recruit taught to think and act for himself. * * *

The meaning of outposts, advance and rear guards, etc., are a sealed book to many soldiers to the end of their soldiering days.

EXTRACTS FROM JOTTINGS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.

[By a SENIOR Officer.]

The unintelligent study of the Franco-German war has, in some measure, been responsible for failures in South Africa where the conditions of foe and country were very different.

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What, I wonder, would have been said, a year ago, to a subaltern who had advocated that 5-inch guns should be sent to South Africa and drawn by oxen to accompany the troops in the march on Pretoria, On the contrary, we must thrust responsibility on the juniors and as much of it and at as early an age as possible and we must ruthlessly extirpate those who prove unfit to bear it. * * * The cause of it all is weakness at headquarters whereby men who are known to be mediocre or even worse are allowed to rise to and hold high and responsible positions to the great detriment of the service generally.

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It is obvious that care and intelligent supervision in such things as water supply, disposal of latrine and other refuse, general cleanliness of dwellings, tents, cook houses, cooking vessels, etc., contribute in a large measure to the maintenance of health and prevention of disease, especially when troops in large numbers are encamped for long on the same ground.

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Offending units could almost always reckon getting off with a very light censure if they were detected in possession of a filth pit in such a condition as to be the means of spreading disease broadcast. Yet a piece of carelessness on outpost duty whereby one life had been lost would have been attended by very serious consequences. Similarly camps have often been pitched on unsuitable ground or in cramped situations to the detriment of health in order to avoid some slight tactical disadvantage. It is as curious as it is regrettable that little or no account seems to be taken in our army of the ability of officers to keep their men in good physical condition. Commanding officers can make their mark by having regiments proficient in signaling, musketry, etc., while a cavalry colonel scores many points by being a good horsemaster. Yet an officer whose men enjoyed marked immunity from illness would be fortunate if the fact were noticed at all by his superiors, and still more fortunate if it were not attributed to good luck rather than to good management.

EXTRACTS FROM THE LESSONS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN AND CHINESE WARS.

[BY FRITZ HOENIG. Translated from "Die Woche," No. 1, 1901. Published in the Journal of the Royal Service Institution, March 15, 1901.]

So long as England has a great naval superiority the mother country is best protected by her fleet. This superiority diminishes yearly with the French and German plans of 1900, and Russian exertions. Moreover, England is no longer able to man her fleet properly. *

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With an adequate sea force and proper preparations the landing of masses in Great Britain is quite possible. *

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Their success depends on an exact knowledge of the enemy's condition, on good plans, and clever execution, but according to scientific theory, presume a standing army, for it alone can be ready for operations immediately after the declaration of war. The alliance of the Republic rendered possible the carrying out of the plan; their frontiers would be effectively covered by the seizure of the tongue-shaped part of northwest Natal, and at the same time all the passes be secured. The levy of the Boers lacked, however, a reliable organization, military discipline, and, lastly, a settled commander in chief over the forces of both Republics. * Patriotism, endurance, shooting powers, and mobility of the individual could not make up for them.

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The Boers could not,, owing to their political and individual peculiarities, submit to discipline and organization; this is the chief cause of their misfortunes. The army of a weak state must possess, in conjunction with the markmanship and mobility of the Boers, the desire and ability to assume the offensive, and must therefore be carefully trained in the tactical offensive in time of peace. As John de Witt said of the Dutch, it is only when the danger stares them in the face that they rise to it.

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England has, however, been forced to exert herself greatly against the bare 50,000

Boers. The war has cost her till now more than £20,000,000, and her field army has been repeatedly brought to a standstill from sickness, casualties, and want of horses. * * **Until the end of April 277 steamers were chartered, which conveyed 201,474 men, 34,384 horses, 110 machine guns, 316 field guns, 42 howitzers, 16 siege and 6 mountain guns to Africa.

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Before the end of April 60,000 horses and 17,000 mules were sent, and 15,000 horses and 6,000 mules ordered. which have since been sent. Up to the same time rations for 220,000 men and 90,000 beasts were sent. Only such a rich country and so technically and commercially developed, at the same time having command of the sea, could attempt such performances; it beats anything in military history. * * * That a peasant people possessed only of mounted infantry has forced England to this great putting forth of her strength is something novel. * * *

Later on the casualties of the English were fewer, because Lord Roberts knew how to make use of turning movements, artillery fire, and fighting in skirmishing order; still they always remained heavy. *

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Thus, again, from this war we draw the lesson as to the decisive effect of the rifle fire of skirmishers, but that must not lead us to underestimate the value of good artillery fire. Taken as a whole, the armament of neither side is up to the level of the day. * * *

And the English never succeeded, notwithstanding their frequent skillful turnings of the Boer flanks with considerable mounted forces, in preventing the Boers getting away in good time. The Boers showed a cunning at this game which has never been attained by any army. It is due primarily to their cleverness in moving mounted and fighting dismounted. By avoiding all decisive actions which might be unfavorable they have succeeded in dragging on the war in an astonishing way.

EXTRACTS FROM INFANTRY IN A NEW CENTURY.

[By Col. the Right Hon. Sir J. H. A. MACDONALD, K. C. B., brigadier-general, commanding the Fourth Infantry Brigade. Published in the Journal of the Military Service Institution for May, 1901, from the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution.]

Thus it comes about that when war, which always drops like a bolt from the blue, suddenly calls upon the soldiery to show what his peace training has taught, too often armies have to pay in terrible losses, both of men and battles, for the failure of enlightened theory to keep a firm guiding hand on practice, compelling it to change its methods, as circumstances in which they are to be applied become changed from whatever cause. * * *

Only in the fifties did the brass gun, with its short length and smooth bore, and Brown Bess with her erratic round ball, give way to what science had preached for in vain more than a hundred years before. It may illustrate practically the truth of the assertion that we are slow to adopt a good thing if I mentioned two facts. One is that there was found in plowing up the field of Culloden a revolver pistol on the Colt principle; and the other is that I saw in an old country house in Cumberland, laid as a curiosity on a deep window sill, a weapon dating 200 years back, in outward appearance like the old blunderbuss, with the thickening out of the metal near the muzzle, but the bore of which was hexagonal, and had small lands in the angles, exactly the same in principle as the Whitworth rifle of 1858.

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The loss of 6,000 to 7,000 men in a quarter of an hour at St. Privât, on ground with not more than a mile of frontage, gave a lesson that could not be forgotten, and drove the Prussians to improvised modes of action.

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The principal conditions of the modern combat in relation to infantry are:

1. The fire-swept space measured by miles in the case of artillery, and by much more than a mile in the case of small arms. * * *

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2. The speed of fire increased in a proportion of at least 6 to 1. 5. The more effective character of fire from the flattening of the trajectory of all arms, and from the improvements in speed of fire and destructive power, and in the case of the artillery from the development in shell design and explosives.

6. As a result of the changes in weapons, protracted fighting in the preliminary stages of the combat, at distances at which the personnel of the troops engaged is not effective as a moral factor, in contrast to the old days in which the engagement did not begin until the opposing forces were at a short interval, so that appearances were a potent factor. All this moral effect by outward appearances is gone

forever.

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7. Impossibility of the movement of troops being conducted by the set word of command of officers in high rank commanding several hundreds of men, combined with the fact that as smokeless powder makes the locating of a force difficult, loudly

shouted words of command may reveal the position of troops which it is important to conceal.

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8. Great increase of physical * * * (and) moral strain. 11. The certainty that, at and after the decisive moment, and at the very time when well-prepared counterstroke will take effect, there will probably be a confusion of units far greater than in the days of short-range combats.

12. That unless efficient means are found for providing ammunition supply during the engagement there may be failure, excessive loss, and capture where there should have been success. * * *

Something of development in accurate and disciplined use of fire must be learned or practiced at every drill. At every drill the rank and file must be exercised in training for fire, and the leaders of the smaller units be exercised in the directing of fire, and those under them accustomed to receive and to assimilate such direction. Commanding officers should inculcate into all of the subordinate commanders the conviction that every hour spent at drill in which the rifle has not been kept before the mind of the soldier as that for the intelligent use of which he is a soldier at all, and his capacity to use it effectively, stimulated by exercise, is an hour more or less wasted. * * *The idea that musketry and drill training are two separate things, and that the former is not part of the daily business of the soldier, is harmful, and has in the past done much evil. The officer has not been sufficiently impressed with the idea that firework is the essence of the foot soldier's business, * * * and the tendency has been to dissociate drill from field aptitude and fire exercise instead of bringing movement and fire exercises into the closest and most constant daily association.

The next thing that is necessary in the preliminary training is that the drill by shouted word of command shall be used only occasionally, and at the commencement of the drill hour, and that there be constant training in intelligent movement in response to observed signal. In these days of long-range, accurate firearms, the stealthy mode of the hunter is more appropriate than the war shout of the close combat and the shrill note of the bugle.

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The new conditions of war call for leading, in which, on a quiet note from the whistle, every eye in the unit shall be on the leader, trained to understand his signal and to intelligently respond to his leading in absolute silence, no word or signal coming from elsewhere taking any effect, each subcommander down to the lowest group leader keeping his subunit in hand, so that what is desired may be executed promptly and efficiently. *

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The next point I would emphasize is the importance of developing control as distinguished from command, by the formation of groups under group leaders, and making this an integral part of the organization. What is wanted is the handful of men that the group leader can control personally under his superior by individual observation. This mode of working should be constantly practiced. It has been acknowledged on all hands that this is desirable and ought to be done, but it is not done. * * * There is no way in which the all-important elements of tactical cohesion and of fire control can be more efficiently developed than by the use of a system of grouping. But it must be a constant use during the training and made matter of daily practice.

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It is not necessary to say much upon the next head, which is physical training. Great attention has been given to this of late years, and with the best possible results. The present system has been most scientifically devised to develop the body and its different organs in the best possible way. * * The recruit will get all that he requires of training in prompt obedience in an interesting and unmonotonous manner, while at the same time his physique is being healthily developed. * But it has also become manifest that no infantry marching, however magnificent as a feat of pluck and endurance, can give the results it did in former days, if your opponent has higher mobility from being so organized that his infantry is carried from place to place at a speed greater than that of foot march. * Now, we have four means of increasing mobility, and let us be thankful that, as the primary object of all military organization is home defense, in this country all of them are available, and the country itself affords the best means of making advantageous use of them. The four are: Railways, motor vehicles, bicycles, and horses. Perhaps some may wonder that I put horses last. But I do so advisedly, for of all the four the horse is for home-defense infantry purposes the most expensive, the most difficult to provide for, the most perishable, and the slowest. That we shall always require a large contingent of infantry mounted on horses is certain, for there are many occasions to which mechanical mobility is not satisfactorily applicable. Nevertheless, we shall commit a grievous error if we confine our efforts in the direction of increased mobility for the infantry to the organization of a horse-carried force only..

* * * Motor vehicles, traveling at the rate of 20 or more miles an hour, will give great facilities for seizing advanced points, holding them while troops are coming up in support, holding on to cover withdrawals, and transferring troops from one part of the front to another or to a flank. The vision is of steel-plated motor wagons, with machine guns mounted on them, working in aid of the infantry by conveying groups of them rapidly from point to point, forward, back, or to a flank, acting as the guard of bicycles when cyclists are engaged off the road, covering their withdrawal when necessary, or bringing forward their bicycles when they advance, obviating the present difficulty which handicaps the cyclist, viz, that his vehicle has to be left at a fixed spot to which he must return. The development of the road tractor for war service, both combatant and transport, is one of the most important matters for immediate consideration, going far beyond my present subject. In the motor carriage we have means of locomotion in which high speed is attainable and can be kept up, the fuel for the driving being small in bulk and light in weight, while the motive power is not limited by any consideration of fatigue or feeding and watering divergencies and stoppages. It may also, looking to the speed with which a power carriage can go back and forward, be the means of, in great measure, overcoming the difficulty of infantry ammunition supply, which is daily becoming a more important factor in the combat. The combination of cycle and motor carriage will, as has been pointed out, be of very great value. General Maurice has successfully experimented in this direction, and his report is most encouraging.

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What is wanted is that a large number of the infantry should be able to ride, manage, and take proper care of horses.

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The question of what can be got out of the soldier without his being lost to the service, temporarily or permanently, depends more on what he has to carry and how he has to carry it than upon many considerations which authority has hitherto deemed all-important. * Why should the soldier be the only workingman in the empire whose dress is entirely unsuited to the work which he is called upon to perform? * * *

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The incovering of the arm in warm weather is one of the greatest reliefs possible to a man who has to exert himself. It is done by the workingman all over the world. And nothing wili refresh a tired man so much as being able, when water is found, to apply it from his elbows to the tips of his fingers. Thus the soldier, who has to work hard and carry a good deal of weight, would get a very important refreshment and aid to resist fatigue, which his present sleeve unnecessarily increases. He has a right to relief, seeing that he can not in war have an eight-hour day, and may have to wait long for rest and food.

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A flexible headdress, well brimmed, is the choice of all men who have to endure physical hardship.

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Čol. J. A. Fergusson, P. S. C. (late Rifle Brigade): * * * "Troops can not approach the enemy, except in extended order, within a mile. We shall never again probably be opposed by an enemy the whole of whose army consists of mounted infantry. * * I am entirely at one with the lecturer in essentials, and I think it is a most valuable thing that attention has been drawn to the necessity of having more mounted infantry, and real mounted infantry; not taking your picked men from the infantry battalions and half training them as mounted infantry, but having a large number in our service of real mounted infantry. * * * I think the real lessons of the war are, more training in scouting, more practice in intrenching, and that every infantry soldier should carry an eatable ration in his haversack, and no man should ever go into action with only the iron ration that he can not eat until he gets hot water."

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Col. E. T. H. Hutton, C. B., A. D. C.: * "The real secret of the steadiness of men in action and of the disciplined handling of men under trying conditions is that the administrative formation unit and the tactical unit should be identical. * * * The whole secret of success of leading troops in war under the conditions which now prevail depends on the decentralization of authority to the group leader and to the individuality group itself. * * * This group system must be accepted as the administrative as well as the tactical unit of organization; that is to say, that the subunit or group in barracks, in camp, or in bivouac must correspond with the subunit or group on the drill ground and on the field of battle. The close formations of the early part of the nineteenth century are perfectly inapplicable to the tactical formations required for the field of battle of the present day. * The two principles which are all-important for success in battle are, firstly, a stern, strict, discipline-an effacement of the individual when acting in mass; and, secondly, a high degree of individuality and self-reliance on the part of each soldier when acting by himself. As regards the first, the instinct of discipline which must be ever

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