Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-06-11
NATIONAL RIFLE MATCH
War Department Will Have a Big Affair
 dSea Git Next September.

Washington, D. C., June 11.-The War department is making arrange ments for the next national rifle match which is to be held at Sea Girt. beginning September 4. Unus- ual efforts are being made to secure the attendance of team from each state in the Union as well as from Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philip pines. It. is improbable that there will be any team from the Philip pines, however, although at one time 1t looked as though arrange ments had practically been com pleted for the attendance of team from our Asiatic territory but 1t was believed that the expense of bring ing team from the Philippines to Sea Girt and their return would be so much as to lead to unfavorable criticism. The War department, however is hopeful that every state in the United States will be represented by team at Sea Girt and has ad" dressed letters to the adjutant gen. erals of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania Massachusetts, Con- necticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, urging them to make provision for the attendance of 2 team from their states. Accurate rife shooting is calculated by ex- perts of the department to count as 8 1-2 points out of ten is estimating the efficiency of soldier on the line of battle and holds that while the teams from the above named states may not win the prizes the members would be brought into contact with the finest military rife shots in the world and thus be enabled to gather information and ideas relative to shooting which it would be impos- sible to obtain under any other cir cumstances. Such information would be carried back to their homes to be disseminated to other members of the national guard of these states. This would undoubtedly cause many others to take an interest in rife practice and directly promote a greater interest in such practice and incidentally in all other matters re- lating to the National Guard.
 Commenting on this matter mem Der of the National Guard for the promotion of rife practice, which has charge of the national matches, said At the breaking out of the Spanish American war the members of our small regular army were, as class, the finest body of military rifle shots in the world and when an enemy showed his head or body at distance of 400 or 500 yards and even much farther he was generally put out of action. On the other hand our men charged over open ground to the Spanish rife pits with com paratively few casualties because the Spaniards had never been taught to shoot. 3. This fine shooting on the part of the regular army was due, main ly, to the competitions which the of- ficers and men had attended. Gen. erally one man from each company would attend a competition; he might not win a medal but he learn ed a great deal and returned with the information to his company so that in a short time the members of the company knew all he could tell them. This continued for a num- Der of years and the result produced as before stated was the finest lot of military rife shots in the world. It is believed that these points about rife shooting would be disseminated even better in the national guard than in the regular army.