This campaign has been the first between two civilised nations where high explosives have been used in the bursting charges. I have made careful inquiries from Boer prisoners as to its effect, and the only conclusion that I have come to is that veracity is not a virtue of the burgher. Some have spoken of the bursting of a lyddite shell as the most terrible experience they have ever had, and have compared its action to that of an earthquake. But I must confess that on pursuing my inquiries further I have generally found that these vivid portrayers of its awful effects have been attached to some hospital in the rear. The prisoners taken at Paardeberg were singularly divided as to its destructive power. Albrecht is said to have declared that it was a pure waste to drop a lyddite shell into soft ground, and to have admitted that on rocky ground it had a most demoralising effect. On the whole, however, I am inclined to say that the effect of lyddite is certainly not as great as we expected, and I cannot help thinking that time-shrapnel well burst and well aimed is more dreaded by the Boers than lyddite shells.
And now I am going to tread on delicate ground. We have all our little idiosyncrasies, and gunners are not without theirs. They will have nothing to say to the Vickers-Maxim. "It is a toy and not a gun," I have heard many a gunner declare. But I contend that we have never used it properly. Lord Dundonald's galloping Maxim was intended to accompany cavalry. Why not have a galloping "pom-pom"? It can be brought into action with great speed, it has a great range, and everybody will agree that it is a most accurate gun. It would have been most useful against the Boers when they fled from Poplar Grove, and its effect upon a battery coming into action is not to be despised, as the gallant T Battery will testify from their experiences at Driefontein. Again, its use on kopjes held by cavalry pending the arrival of infantry would surely be beneficial. It has a demoralising effect; even more so than a percussion shrapnel, and our enemy in the present campaign is particularly susceptible to demoralisation when operating in open ground.
One of the difficulties with which the artillery in the present campaign has had to contend has been to find out the extent of our infantry advance for which they are preparing with a bombardment. As the Mauser and Lee-Metford render early cover necessary for infantry, it has come about that our infantry, while seeking to render itself invisible to the enemy, has succeeded in making itself almost entirely invisible to our supporting artillery. On many occasions our artillery has ceased fire long before it was necessary, because it became impossible to tell how far our advance extended, for no artillery officer--and rightly so--will run the risk of inflicting damage on his own infantry. The remedy for this state of things has yet to be discovered.