rifles with deadly precision and rapidity.

On this point--the general ineffectiveness of artillery fire when the
enemy possesses good cover--the history of modern warfare repeats
itself. The Russian bombardments of Plevna were quite futile, and
General Todleben acknowledged that it sometimes required a whole day's
shell fire to kill a single Turkish soldier. At the fight round the
Malaxa blockhouse in Crete, at which I was present, the united squadrons
of the European powers in Suda Bay suddenly opened fire on the hill and
the village at its foot. In ten minutes from eighty to one hundred
shells came screaming up from the bay and burst amongst the insurgents
and their Turkish opponents. We all of us--on the hill and in the
village--bolted like rabbits and took what cover we could. The total net
casualties from these missiles--some of them 6-inch shells--were, I
believe, three, all told.

Some of those amateur critics at home who write indignant letters about
the War Office labour under a twofold delusion. They frequently ask
indignantly how it is that our guns have been outclassed by those of the
Boers? As a matter of fact in almost every engagement of the present
campaign our artillery has been superior to that of the enemy; but, of
course, the artillery of a defending force, well posted on rising
ground, possesses enormous advantages over that of the assailants, who
have frequently to open fire in open and exposed positions easily swept
by shrapnel fire from guns, which, hidden amid trenches and rocks, are
often well-nigh invisible.

Another fundamental error in many of the indignant letters about the
alleged defects of our artillery arises from a misunderstanding of the
real value of guns in attacking a fortified position. The most sanguine