THE ITALIAN ARMY ON A WAR TOOTING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5319, 13 April 1878, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE ITALIAN ARMY ON A WAR TOOTING.

(From die Pall. Mull Gazette.) The Italian Government, according to the latent calculations at the War Office, can bring into the field 310,000 men, anti can mobilise 100,000 militia for a aeefind line. Italy; has besides 300,000 men in the reserves. All the corps of the first line are armed with 1870 riHes. All the guns of 'the' i are i breech-loaders; the old 12-inch cannon, is abolished. Only the militia retain the muzzleloading rifle cannon and the old muskets remodelled. In the above numbers the! so. called territorial militia kept for internal Service are not included, nor sundry garrisons. The Italian forces are divided into armies, army corps, and divisions. A division consists of two brigades of infantry, two squadron? of cavalry, and one brigade of three batteries' of artillery.' The army corps is formed of two divisions, and of supplementary troops, i.e., one regiment of bersaglieri, one’ brigade of cavalry, and one brigade of engineers. The of armies into which' the forces are divided ’Lpends upon the strategical necessities, of the war. The armies may be composed of thiee, four, or oven more army corps. According to the last budget presented by the Minister of War, the estimates for 1878, on a peace footing, stand ,at 201,443,398 lire, about £8,000,000 sterling. Deducting sundry items to be repaid, the reporter calculates these estimates' at only 170,000,000 lire, i.e., 5,250,000 more than the proceeding year. ; The excess is duo to jau increased number of horses and the increased price of forage, to the carrying out of the new law of military territorial departments, to the increase of the effective medium force in active service, to material and new establishments for the artillery corps, and to the new:tariff fer the incidental .necessities of the army. But the chief expense has been incurred by the increase of the Alpine corps, brought np from 24 to 30 companies, and from 100 to 250 the effective force of each company. The reporter of the Parliamentary Commission, Balegno, member of Parliament and general in active service, laments the saving of 2,241,500 lire, which was devoted in past years to the instruction of second category of conscripts. He begs the Ministry to reconsider this question, pointing out the serious inconveniences that will arise from the non-in-struction of the second category. Although insufficient in former times, the slight instruction given was advantageous in a technical and in a moral sense, as it gave the conscripts some sort of drill, and served as a reminder in time of peace that military service is obligatory on all citizens. In a country l : ke Italy, where shooting matches are almost unknown, and where military traditions are rare, such instruction cannot he dispensed with with impunity. Again, should it be necessary to call out “mobilise! - ” the second category, 20 or 30 days at the utmost can he rendered available for their instruction—a time altogether insufficient for any practical utility. General Balegno, in the name of the Parliamentary Commission, therefore begs the Ministry to allow 100 days daring the present year for the instruction of the second category. One of the most important reforms introduced into the Italian army of late years is the separation of the sanitary service from the commisariat. This was first introduced practically by the volunteer snrgeon solclier, Dr. Bertoni, in 1866. The Prussians found its necessity, and separated the two departments in 1870. Now the Indian War Office has entirely separated the sanitary service from the Xutendenza, merely allowing the latter to supervise the accounts. M. Ltjon le Port, snrgeon-in-chief of the ambulances of Metz, in an important work entitled “Da Cbirurgie Militaire,” attributes the immense superiority of the Prussian over the Trench military ambulances, hospitals, and general sanitary service, to the total independence of the heads of the department, who depend, as other generals, on the Cominauder-in-Chiet alone.