Smokeless Powder in Attack.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 2713, 26 January 1892, Page 4

Smokeless Powder in Attack.

In tbj absence of the smoke screen on both sides, the company officers not only find it easier to work together, but can control their men and judge the effect of their fire on the enemy to a far greater degree than was formerly possible. From their point of view this increased power of control more than compnesates the attack for the increased facility of concealment smokeless powder confers on the defence. It is true that the latter also profits by the same increased power of control; but they argue that, from the nature of things, the defence striving only to avoid being beaten, whereas the attack fights with the determination to win, the latter is in a position to make far better use of this new power than the former. Put in another form, it comes to this—the heavier and more accurate the fire whistling over a trench, the harder it is to m ke men raise tlieir beads over it to take steady aim. Smokeless powder makes it easier for the attack to deliver such a fire ; hence the difficulties of the defence will be increae 3d. Fu ther, in the absence of smoko, men stationary on the defence cannot escape the depressing influence of the dead and wounded lying around them, but the attack leaves all these evidences of the fight bebi nd it.JSo again the advantage is on sid . Generally, it is held that the possibilities of concealment the new powder affords have been immensely overrated, and what I have personally seen during the past two year leads me to the same conclusion. If ordinary European short-service soldiers possessed the skill of the Bed Indians as skirmishers, no doubt the advantage would be immense ; but, as a fact, they do not, and neither in Germany nor in any other country have I ever e > perienced any difficulty in making out the enemy from the infantry fightiug line. —A Military Correyondf.it in “ The Times A