EVERY BULLET HAS NOT ITS BILLET.

Kumara Times, Issue 1059, 21 February 1880, Page 4

EVERY BULLET HAS NOT ITS BILLET.

The ".Ohiel" in Bell's Life referring to a suggestion made by the Globe, that the third-class target used in rifle shooting should be of the same size and shape as an infantry soldier kneeling ; the secondclass target, the figure of an infantry soldier standing ; the first-class the figure of a cavalry soldier mounted, says : That is not a bad idea, for targets at present in vogue resemble nothing whatever that a man is likely to shoot at in earnest, either as a soldier or a sportsman. They are suggestions of no warlike idea, and yet I suppose the object of training men to be marksmen is not that they may win cups in time of peace, but that they may prove efficient soldiers in time of war. To the man who has never fired at anything except a square white target with a black circle in the middle of it, a human being must be altogether a puzzling object to aim at, hence the ludicrous expenditure of amunition in a battle in proportion to the result of killed and wounded. In the Peninsula War, when the old flint-lock musket was the only weapon of precision (!), it was calculated, I believe, that about a million cartridges was expended for every man killed outright. Of course, with the present Btraight-shooting breech-loaders, the result would have been different, but even now the percentage of shots that prove fatal must be very small. In the ate Zulu war, when our men were biasing at closely-packed masses of. Bavagea, the execution done was really by no means great, when you take into consideration of rapidity, and .precision in the fire of the modern <breeeh- loader. It is an established maxim that "ever bullet has Hb billeU?: And, yet here we have proof positive that some ninety per cent, of the the bullets fired in notion are unfortunate foundlings, deprived of their natural rights, cast loose upon the world, and billetted nowhere. - I think the anomaly might be to a certain extent rectified, if men;were accustomed in time of peace to fire at objects resembling those which will confront them in the field of battle. It would be well, too, if officers were taught kow to shoot straight with their revolvers. One of Oetewayb's indunas, who was present;at Isandlwhana, has described to a_ major of the, 13th how he • engaged in single combat with two English officers, and how ; each emptied his revolver at him within half-a-dozen paces with no other result three trifling- grazes of the skin, - The-hapless young fellows may have been—probably were—-flurried, but I doubt whether you would find one officer in ten who had troubled himself to become efficient in the use of the weapon upon which alone his life mußt depend in action—for the regulation sword; I take it, is more for show than nse."