THE MAGAZINE OR REPEATING RIFLE

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 215, 18 July 1879, Page 2

THE MAGAZINE OR REPEATING RIFLE

It is satisfactory to Jearn, as we do from the Army and Navy Gazette, that at length a fair trial is to be made in England of the magazine or repeating rifle. It has been already amply demonstrated, during a very exhaustive series of experiments carried out on the Continent, that the Hotchkiss and Kropatsehek magazine rifles are just as accurate as any other rifle; that when used as ordinary breechloaders tliey can be fired just as rapidly as the regulation arms in use in European armies; while, when the magazine arrangements are made use of, they can fire • twice as many rounds as can be discharged in the same time from on ordinary breechloader. Perhaps, however, one of the greatest advantages which would be derived from the adoption of these magazine rifles would be the moral support they would afford to a body of troops armed with them, and standing on the defensive. It has been conclusively proved over and over again during recent campaigns that a line of men of adequate strength, armed with breechloaders, can, if they keep cool and fire steadily, definitely check by their fire the advance of the most formidable attack that can be developed against them. The assailants * may succeed in pushing forward to within a very short distance of the defensive line, but they will never be able to cross the last few score paces separating them from this if the defenders only remain steady; and nothing will tend so greatly to keep men steady as the knowledge that they have in the magazine of their rifles a number of cartridges which if necessary they can, when a crisis arrives, pour out in an almost continual stream. The feeling that they have this reserve which they can use with deadly effect at a decisive moment will do more than anything else to prevent men losing their heads, as they are otherwise but too likely to do, when they see an assailant continuing to advance despite the fire poured upon him.