1 officer, 1 sergeant, 2 corporals, and 20 privates--that is, 1 N.C.O. and 10 men to each gun. It is almost superfluous to say that the whole detachment must be trained to work and fire the gun, and should have a very thorough knowledge of its parts and mechanism, and be experts at remedying failures and effecting minor repairs. Until the whole detachment are so trained and can detect the cause of any failure instantly and remedy the same in the minimum time required, it is useless to attempt tactical training in the field. The preliminary training will take from three to six months, according to the ability of the instructor and the time available daily for work. It will be found that certain men of the detachment are far more skilful in laying and firing the gun than others, and it is undoubtedly sound to specially train these men as gun-layers and to permanently allot to the two best layers the duties of Nos. 1 and 2 (_i.e._ the firer and his assistant). This should be the post of honour and coveted accordingly, and the two best gun-layers should be awarded a distinguishing badge. As no badge is authorised by our regulations, a lance stripe might be given to the best No. 1 of each gun. In training the men of the section in the preliminary details of working the guns, the following points may be found of use. First frame a course of instruction for each day which will give systematic and progressive individual instruction in the following points: mechanism, name and use of every part, the working of the mechanism, care of gun, stripping and fitting, loading and firing; spare-part box, the name of each of its contents and recognition of every part _when out of the box_; failures, their recognition and remedy; gun-laying and firing, co-operation between layer, loader, and observer. This course should last at least three months, provided not less than two hours a day are available. Drills may be combined with preliminary instruction at the end of the first month, and must aim at extreme quickness in dismounting the gun and opening _aimed_ fire and remounting the gun again. The chief points in the preliminary training are that _all_ the detachment are _equally_ instructed. Training on the 20-yard range in barracks should take place during the third month, and special targets should be used to teach laying the gun, slow use of elevating gear and combined sights, traversing fire, fire control, rapid change of target, indirect fire. During this short-range practice the failures should be practically demonstrated, and firing on the range should never take place without making a few artificial failures to test the efficiency of the detachment. These failures should be introduced by the officer himself without the knowledge of the detachment, and should be so arranged as to occur naturally while firing. They should be timed by him in each case, and the record time for the remedy of each failure posted up in the barrack-room with the man’s name.