TRAINING FOR WAR.

Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 50, 21 August 1915, Page 2

TRAINING FOR WAR.

How It Is Done.

AT the Auckland Drill Hall on arecent day a cadet non-com. was instructing a squadl of adult non-coms. who> will in a little time be drafted into the fighting forces at Gallitpoli. He was a very good noncom, indeed, and worth watching. He knew the game—the peace soldiering game — one—two—three — mark time—as you were, and so on, and was good to watch. These men, who were to lead troops in trench warfare, were being taught the accurate way to handle; a rifle (the "manual" exercise), so that the most exacting matron on the finest Bank holiday in the Domain could find no fault with the theatrical effect. Having trained this squad for war, the young non-com. solemnly put these men, who are to take their lives in their hands, in the goose-step! He further gave them in correct drill book style the whole of the movements necessary to make the soldier look nice at a funeral parade, and by the time he had done with them the whole squad knew [precisely how to "reverse arms" and to rest the barrel of the rifle on the boot while the funeral procession passed by.

On Monday a number of Auckland men invalided from the camps returned to duty. Asked; how long; they had been in training camp, the men said "about a month." Asked if they had been trained' in musketry during that month the men said "yes." Asked how many shots they had fired the men said "none." The musketry training these particular men had undergone consisted wholly in "snapping practice." The rifles served out to these men were the "dollar rifles" brought to this country from Canada. Many of thera were 'loose in the foresight bands, and the instructors declared they would "tighten up" when, a few rouindia were fired. The fact that no rounds at all were fired out of them may be the reason why they haven't tightened ur> yet. "Snapping practice" for killing Turks means that the recruit is given a rifle perfectly unlike the rifle with which he is to shoot Turks. He aims at a disc held, to the eye of another man*—but not with ammunition. The man holding the disc corrects the aiming of the snapper. It's precisely like giving a man meat to chop, in order to teac__ him how to solder a gas pipe, or instructing him in horsemanship so asto make him an able seaman.

The days of the man who can be trained to stare straight to his front in a stupified way is over. To teachmachine made tactics to non-coms, is damnable. Under the maohine made style of drill witnessed at the Drill Hall on Monday morning a platoon might be ordered to stand in a perfectly dead-true line on the top of a trench and be wiped out. There ia nothing clever in being wiped out. The soldier should be taught to remain; alive as long as he possibly can. May one help in rubbing in the fact that it isn't the dead or wounded soldiiers 1 who win wars— j but tht soldiers who remain alive and unwounded. To teach non-coms, the goosestep and the ceremonial drill generally to fit them for the trenches is asuseful as teaching Chinese as a basisof the French language. No one in Wellington, which is the centre of the training system, has ever suggested that soldiers should be taught to shoot. Only last week this paper received a letter from a prominent journalist who has entirely devoted bis writing to soldiering, but who received the suggestion made by the Observer that shooting should betaught as "something entirely new!" :!

There is a powerful possibility that many New Zealanders of the very best kind—keen,. strong and' willing, have fired their first shot out. of a rifle at the enemy. No man should leave for the front who has; not been instructed in the lethal use of-his weapons every day during: histraining. Every pill that does not kill the enemy is useless. Every kind of ceremonial, theatrical display is criminal waste of time. Every

movement intended to make a soldier _an automaton is sheer stupid official murder. Rifle training without ball ammunition is like dining without food), or drinking imaginary water from a glass with no end in it. The -authorities who persist in sending draft® away without a true and complete instruction in the salvation of their own hides' are simply sending men to destruction. This matter of shooting is the most important subject touched in New Zealand since the war broke out. To the authorities the subject has no importance -whatever. When these reinforcements reach Gallipoli their rifles will be the one thing they live for and think of. The rifle is with a man night and day. He sleeps with it. Before he goes to the front it is simply a stick with a thing that clicks when it is pulled to amuse the ser-geant-major.