LORD WOLSELEYON WAR.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1671, 5 March 1890, Page 3

LORD WOLSELEYON WAR.

The battles of the future will bo very different from even those of 1870, and will bear very little resemblance to those of Crimean times. One remarkable alteration will be the absence of all that terrible noise which the discharge of five or six hundred field guns and. the roar of musketry caused in all great battles. We shall have practically no smoke to mark the position of the enemy's batteries and troops in action. The sound of cannons will be slight, and will no longer indicate to distant troops where their comrades are engaged or the point upon which they should consequently march. Our sentries and advanced posts can no longer alarm the main body upon the approach of the enemy by the discharge of their rifles. The camp or bivouac will no longer be disturbed by night by the spluttering fire of picquets in contact with the enemy. Different arrangements for giving the alarm will have to be resorted to. The main column on the march cannot in future be warned, by the shots of flanking parties, of the enemy's proximity, and a battle might possibly be raging within a few miles of it without that fact becoming at once apparent. Most of the important mechanical inventions, most of the discoveries in science have an influence on the manufacture and use of the arms, ammunition and equipment, of the soldier. "Woe lo the nation that does not make her tactics conform to the arms of the day, and to the varying conditions under which war is made and battles fought and won. Wellington won great battles, because, being a thoroughly practical soldier well read in war science and of great experience on a battle-field, he had adopted a system of drill and tactics not only thoroughly in accord with the arms he had to employ, and the conditions under which contending armies then met in battle, but in at least one great respect far ahead of the tactical formations used by all other nations. I refer to his use of the ' thin red line.' Are we certain that we now alter our system of battle training according as those conditions vary ? Let the man of war experience, whose mind is thoroughly saturated with the history of what took place in the great struggles between Frank and Teuton in 1870, visit Aldershot, and then toll the nation whether he is not satisfied with what he sees there. Our army is beautifully drilled, but it seems to be dawning upon us that our drill still retains much that was invented by Frederick the Great, and subsequently modified by Sir John Moore to suit the different conditions under which men fought in his days, from those of fifty years before. The mathematically straight lines and rigid colums, with mechanical wheels and elaborate changes of front, in fact, all that we still term ' brigade drill,' with its absolute exactness and dressing upon points, meant a great deal a century ago, but have they any relation to a soldier's battle duties in the present epoch ? Are they, as some believe, as useless and objectless now, as would be the band grenade drill, or the management and handling of the pike, to which our ancestors attached so much importance in the reign of the Stuarts? The soldier to be of real use in war has now so much to learn that the Germans have ruthlessly wiped out from their military training all the showy and theatrical movements in which some generals take delight, and by the accurate performance of which they are still prone to estimate the military efficiency of regiments. There are some even who think that you might quite as usefully teach our soldiers to dance, and as justly estimate their battle training by the exactitude with which they performed the sailor's hornpipe. Modesty forbids me to say how much superior I know the ' turn out' of our cavalry, infantry, and artillery to be to that of all other nations. But although this smartness of appearance may please the eye of Hyde Park, will it in the least degree help toward success in battle? In other armies, the attention which we pay to burnishing our steel chains and polishing our brass buttons, is riveted on efficient ' battle training,' and the care and energy of tbeir officers are devoted to its teaching. Which is right on this point, the German army or our army? This question is an important one. Many think that our drill is meant to prepare the British army for a battle-experience of the past.