The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.-It is curious to see how small questions fre-
quently open great controversies. Nothing could appear
more strictly technical than the arguments advanced a few
weeks ago against the present system of musketry drill in
the army, and yet the matter has already been developed
into a subject of the first magnitude. Colonel AP3lurdo,

whose opinion in such a case is of obvious value, does not
hesitate to suggest, as our readers yesterday saw, that the
system of musketry instruction now pursued is something
far worse than even its assailants alleged. Besides being

harassing and irksome to the soldier, it may be actually

piejudicial to the army at large. In short, according to
this view of the case, we are maintaining at considerable
expense to the State, and much to the annoyance of the
soldier, certain schools of instruction which may be ex-

petted to operate with direct injury to our military power.

To explain this enigma, we have only to indicate the close
connexion between the tactics of an army and the weapon
carried by the troops. Twenty years ago it was still a cur-
rent proverb that the true weapon of the British soldier
was the bayonet. The meaning, however, of the maxim
was this—that the soldier had then no other weapon to

rely upon. Ho carried a musket, but he could not trust to
this instrument for sending a bullet to its mark. As a
machine for propelling balls with anything like accuracy
of direction or range the old firelock was almost useless ;
indeed, the reader ma•y recollect, perhaps, the testimony

given before a committee by a sergeant of the Guards, who

said that if a man took no aim at all with his musket the
bullet might perhaps hit the target, but thA it could not
possibly do so by force of adjustment and level. At that
time, therefore, scientific shooting was avowedly confined
to and or two regiments in the army, which were equipped
with special weapons and specially instructed in the art of
using them. Gradually, however, and in some degree
from the influence of French example, we began to
think that the difference between a musketeer and
a rifleman was a distinction which it was unwise to
maintain, and that every soldier who carried a mus-
ket might as well have the best weapon procurable

and be taught to turn it to the best account. At first the
old principle so far prevailed that we contented ourselves
with increasing the strength of the select regiments of the
army, and making each of the two rifle corps equivalent
to four ordinary battalions. But in the end this distinction
was dropped altogether, and every soldier in the line be-
came, in all but costume, a rifleman. The troops were all
armed with the Enfield rifle, and each trained with great
care and pains to bring its powers into use. It is this
training, conducted under anxious superintendence at the
musketry schools of Hythe and Fleetwood, which was
first made the object of attack as gratuitously tedious and
wearisome, and it is now described as likely to damage the
efficiency of British troops in the field. When the bayonet
was the soldier's weapon it was natural that he should
hasten to employ it ; in other words, that he should get as
quickly as possible to close quarters with the enemy, and
decide the contest by a charge. These tactics, too, were
always believed--at any rate, by ourselves—to be pecu-
liarly suitable to our national qualities, and peculiarly
conducive to success. It is at close quarters that battles
are most commonly decided, and whichever army was
superior in that kind of practice was likely to be superior
altogether. The troops who were best at the bayonet
would probably have the best of the day. It was not often,
as experienced officers said, that bayonets were actually
crossed, but still the bayonet charge decided the affair, for
when it was made with obvious resolutions by soldiers
fitted for their work, the opposing line broke and filmed
before the shock of the collision. These are the tactics
now thought to be superseded by the new practice of mus-
ketry. The bayonet is no longer the special weapon of the
British soldier. He now carries a rifle which will deal death
at a thousand yards, and the fact is carefully impressed
upon his mind. It is natural, therefore, to suppose that he
will rely upon his new arm, and try long-range shooting,
instead of closing instinctively with his enemy as in times
past. His rifle is of no use to him if he is to treat it like the
old musket and neglect it for the bayonet. That is the
view of the case now suggested, and it is obviously not
without reason. Here, however, we must ask whether a
change of tactics, substituting long-range shooting for
bayonet charges, may not be a necessary incident of the
improvement of firearms. The foregoing argument assumes
that as battles have heretofore been decided at close quar-
ters, so they will be decided in future times ; but is that
assumption sound ? Would not a line of troops advancing
to the charge be almost destroyed by rifles and rifled
cannon before they could close ? Is not the day of the
bayonet gone by, and are we not doing the best for our-
selves by cultivating to the utmost the new science, which
has given superiority to the bullet ? Is it remarkable that
these questions, if they can as yet be answered at all, must
apparently be answered in the negative. We are assured
by military authorities that battles will be decided by
actual collision as before, whatever may be done by rifles
and cannon before the final shock. Not only is this Col
M'Murdo's opinion, but it was intimated by Sir Charles
Russell in the late debates. Sir Charles appealed to the
experience of the American war to show that rifle-shooting
—though the Americans have a natural aptitude for the art
—did not decide battles, but, on the contrary, led to extra-
ordinary carnage without any proportionate results. Fede-
rals and Confederates fired away at each other from long
distances till both sides were so weakened as to be unequal
to the shock of personal conflict, and the battle was drawn,
though each army had paid the price of a victory. No
serious affair, it is said, was decided by fine shooting, and
we are led to the conclusion that the old-fashioned
tactics of the bayonet would bare been more effectual
than the new science. Colonel Wilford°, indeed, is not
unprepared to revert at once to the old system of forming
riffemen into select corps. He does not pretend to
depreciate arms of long range and extraordinary precision
in skilled hands, but these arms and this practice may
to be left, he thinks, to picked regiments. The great body
of an army, the G6main battle" as it used to be called, will
have little need of such weapons or such discipline. The
real conflict will still be decided at close quarters—if not
by hand-to-hand fighting, at any rate by volleys delivered
at such short ranges as to call for no extraordinary skill.
On all this we must remark that if in this distribution of
duties a reasonable proficiency in musketry practice is still
to be exacted from the ordinary soldier, while consummate
excellence is reserved for the select rifle corps, the argu-
ment may possibly hold good. But we cannot forget that
ordinary skill, even with ordinary firearms, has always
proved of the greatest value and importance in an engage-
ment. The fire of the British Infantry was notoriously
more fatal than that of other troops, even when the old
musket was still in use, and the difference between the
Enfield rifle and the common firelock, even in untrained
hands, was most sensibly felt both in the Crimea and in
India. There are many degrees of efficiency between abso-
lute skill and no skill at all. Moreover, in many engage-
ments there is no shock of collision,but all depends upon the
bullet, as in the prolonged action round the Confederate
earthworks in Virginia. We think, therefore, that every
soldier should carry a good rifle, and should know how to
use it. The ordinary fire of a battalion, however deli-
vered, would unquestionably be more effective under such
conditions ; but if it is urged that we are exceeding these
conditions in our present system of instruction, and that a
training like that given at Hythe is required only for picked
corps, there may be truth in the doctrine. In short, we
certainiy cannot, on any pretext, afford to go back to the
musketry system of twenty years since, but it is possible
that we may find a desirable position between that and the
system enforced at present.
HERALD. —As our Liberal contemporaries profess them-
selves satisfied with the meeting that was assembled on
Tuesday at Earl Russell's official residence, we do not in-
tend to mar their contentment by too rigid an analysis of
the reasons for such a frame of mind. If they are pleased
they are quite welcome, as far as we are concerned, to all
the delightful emotions which they claim to experience.
And if those who pin their faith upon these political oracles
have caught from them any sentiment of gratification, we
should be sorry for a moment to dispel with rude veracity
that dream of approaching triumph which, as far as we
can:judge, seems likely to prove so ephemeral. Yet it is
not a little strange that so great a discrepancy should pre-
vail as to facts which should admit of easy and satisfactory
verification. The Morning Post has fixed at 286 the num-
hs,i ab 3 urt
ehpdeour
way,ces hot
eccosagusi
sum total
.0a t a
iTd
eht
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i2DI
e 6
da3 i:aywc
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tst
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eh ,
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h-
ber of that faithful band who gathered round Earl Russell
pro-
ceedings,ofensset
and Star, with a gratifying modesty and peculiarly attrac-
tive regard for truth, place the reckoning of the entire
forces at somewhere about 250. But nono of these papers
have
attempted to estimate the proportion of those present
who would do all in their power to trip up the measure.
And even in the sacred precincts of Downing-street were
heard voices protesting,-steadily against the bill. Nor can
we suppose that Mr. Edward James and Mr. Laing were
by any means the only gentlemen present who entertained
the antagonistic feelings towards the Government scheme
li w
which they so uncompromisingly expressed. So that,
without in any ay
insinuating that the gentlemen
who officiated as " tellers" for the Ministerial press
were disposed in any case to see double, we think
that
a very considerable deduction may fairly be
made from the numbers claimed by them as sup-
porters of the bill. The Horning Post has indeed,
ever since the measure appeared, expressed such a
sincere disapprobation both of the proposed changes and
the mode in which it has been suggested to carry them
out, that we can hardly be surprised to find that its infor-
mation on the subject of the meeting is a little inaccurate.
But even supposing that the reports of the more favoured,

because more obsequious, journals were correct, which we
are by no means prepared to admit, we think that a cla-
morous effort at self-gratulation over such a display of party
forces must be construed as an indication, to use Lord
Cranborne's celebrated phrase, of great presence of mind.
Mr. Gladstone's Trojan horse must carry a larger number
of inside passengers if it is to carry out the designs of its
ambitious architect. A Ministry that in its extremest hour
of need can only rally round its chief some two-thirds or
thereabouts of the party which he claims to control, must,
indeed, be daring, almost to the verge of infatuation, if they
still resolve to sacrifice themselves and their followers in
the reckless impetuosity of a forlorn hope. And when a
Premier finds, even in the dwindling host who surround
him, one or two outspoken dissentients who are not afraid
to tell him to his face that they condemn the course ho has
chosen, he can scarcely augur well for his enterprise from
the sounds that prevail in his own camp. But then there
were undoubtedly pleasanter features in the afternoon's
proceedings. The pretty little lovers' quarrel between
Messrs. Bright and Gladstone, with whfch the meeting
terminated, was just the sort of light piece with which a
judicious manager usually contrives to play the house out.
It had been, perhaps, an error to commence the entertain-
ment with so stiff apiece de.resistanee as the serious drama
by the noble author of "Don Carlos," and the somewhat
ambiguous spectacle afforded of the ill-assorted mem-
bers of the Happy Family, which immediately fol-
lowed, reflected small credit on the foresight of
Mr. Brand, or whoever was responsible for the at-
tempt to play the " School for Scandal" with such a com-
pany ; but the comedietta at the finale was all that could
have been desired. Mr. Gladstone, whose forte is not
comedy, could hardly have been expected to play his part
with such easy jocularity, while Mr. Bright, in his sturdy
resolution to withstand any cajoleries on the subject next
his heart, was inimitably good. People who had been led
to suppose that there existed somewhat too intimate rela-
tions between the Cabinet and the member for Birming-
ham must have been ashamed of their suspicions when
they looked upon the conscientious divergence of opinion
on such an important matter ; and the Ministry, which has
at length begun to learn that even Mr. Bright's support
may be bought too dear, at the cost of disgusting the mo-
derate section of the Liberals, are much to be congratuhted
on having secured this brilliant performer in a role where
his apparent antagonism may be dexterously employed to
repair the calamitous consequences of former mistakes
Altogether, "The Underground Passage" was a decided
hit, and if Mr. Gladstone had only the spirit to throw him-
self more completely into this part, and to give to his dif-
ferences with the member for Birmingham a spice of
greater reality, wo think the house might be induced to
tolerate him much longer than in the character he has so
oddly chosen for his own. The " sentimental rant," which
is the conspicuous feature of the language employed by
the "Reformer in spite of himself," may suit a transpon-
tine, or rather, we might say, a trans-Atlantic audience,
but it palls upon the British public. Still, perhaps, the
healthiest symptom to be detected in the whole per-

formance was the abandonment of the ridiculous
cant which has formed the staple of provincial
harangues about the " honest " bill. A very pru-
dent observer has said that when a man begins to talk
about his honesty or a woman about her virtue it is time
to doubt both. And certainly the noisy protestations as to
the " honesty" of a bill, which has been recognised, and

indeed almost confessed, from the very first, to be nothing
but a " dodge," have ceased to inspire the amusement which
they excited a few weeks ago, and tend rather to provoke
disgust than merriment. But at Earl Russell's muster
there was no more nonsense on this head. It may be ne-
cessary for habitual agitators in the country to delude the
poor creatures whom they have duped into a vague aspira-
tion after manhood suffrage as a political panacea, by de-
precatory allusions to instalments and Lord Russell's
"honesty." But in addressing an audience of Liberal
members his lordship was discreet enough to know that
any such declamation would be irrelevant and ridiculous.
And though it was, perhaps, only decent to invite Minis-
terialists to listen to what their recognised chief had got to
say, the only arguments that carried any weight with that
assembly were such as are whispered by Secretaries to the
Treasury, not those which have been so frequently reca-
pitulated by the original Patentee of Reform. It may be
a grievance to his lordship that his machinery of '32 has
' been improved upon since by many thoughtful and pains-
taking politicians ; but we think he is hardly likely to get
his monopoly prolonged even by audacious misrepresen-
tations of better measures.

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