lAN HAMILTON ON SHOOTING.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2051, 30 November 1907, Page 4 (Supplement)

lAN HAMILTON ON SHOOTING.

•On the occasion of the prize-gi.v-ing after a recent rifle meeting cm Salisbury Plain, Liiuitenanit-Geiienil Sir lan Hamilton delivered the- following remarks on the value of the new short rifle, and on the" relative .merits of rifle and bayonet: • —T have watched your shooting with the deepest interest, and, not unnaturally perhaps, I witched my own competition most narrowly of all.- When 1 saw your teams of four rush over their 100 yards, and in the space of a few seconds knock down the lour tiny tiles not much bigger than a mail’s head, and just visible at 200 yards’ range, I could not help thinking what a fine war ■weapon we possessed in our new ride. I saw one team of R.E. enter, armed with the Jong rifle. Refore they could knock down a single one of the tiles opposed to them, the whole four of the tiles facing their rival team were flattened out on the ground. This is a very good practical proof, I think, of the sue peri.ority of the new short rifle, not perhaps for the old-fhsliiom-d style of competitions which consisted of firing at a bull’s-eye wider unnatural conditions, hilt for war. As I watched this competition, 1 thought, too, how much better our men shoot than they used to do, and also than the men of any foreign army I know. In ATiainchurin, for inotance, [ havo seen Russians and Japanese bobbing up and down out of their trenches or cover, not at 200 yards, but at fifty yards, and at tli.-il rangego on missing one another for to long thr.it at last they took to tire bayonet and to the butts of Sheer •rillcs as file only final sot mho ii. Theorists have .since deduced from this t?:e amazing argument that •bayonets and sabres and lances are all coining hack again into givicuil •use. Jlon’t you- believe a wprd of it. No man who has still coolness 1t..; to put a cartridge, into his rifle, ami who has shot through these competitions, need have tiho smallest anxiety about an adversary bent on using a bayonet or sword. The man with +he bayoiiiet or sword can only g’et in if the man with the bullet gets flurried and loses his head.”