Practice With Repeating Rifles.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 213, 30 July 1887, Page 2

Practice With Repeating Rifles.

A correspondent lately saw at Metz a com. pany of (Icrman troop.s drilling with the new repeating rifles, and writes as follows :. "The company I saw had had but little practice, and were getting reprimand? from half a dozen officers standing beside the drill ' sergeant, ior the .slowness of their movements, but to a- non-military eye nothingcould Inue been moie machine-like. The repeating lifle difleis from the ordinary rifla in the fact that the stock, instead of fitop^ pin» shoit wheie it in grasped by the leffr hand, is prolonged to within an inch of th&; end of the barrel. This constitutes the reservoir of cartridges. The iiring consists of three mo\ement-3 — the ' ready,' dining which each man gives a bhai p turn to the right to a little lever above the lock of his gun, and the familiar 'present' and c fire 1* Th company stood four deep, the two front uuiks iiring while the two rear ranks rechaiged their magazine. 80 rapid were the movements that the magazine, holdingeither ten or twehe cartridges — I forget which— was emptied, w ith a perceptible allowance each time for lapid aim, in ten seconds. The thought of what wonkl happen to any body of men exposed to half a minute of firing like this made the spectacle almost appalling. A stolid -looking (ievman by my side, who, as 1 afterwauls learned, had been one of the Landwehr in tho war, expressed his feelings in one woid — the most a igorous in his native tongue. ' Sehaudernaft !' he exclaimed under his breath. It is all very well for a Russian governor to issue oiders to his troops, calling upon them to remember that; battles are Avon by courage and not by repeating riiles, but the moral eiFecb of tho new weapon both upon those using it and those opposed to it must be enoimous. To be able to wtit until the enemy, in whatever form ho may be, is within a few yards of you, and then to deliver your fire upon him at tho rate of a, shot a second, is enough to make ' cracks' oub of even Fnlstalf's levies."