I know scores of men who have been months in the trenches and over the top in several attacks who have never fired a shot out of their rifles. In fact, it is very, very rarely that the man in the trenches gets a chance to aim at an enemy at a greater range than a hundred yards. There are thousands of men whom I know who believe that the long-range rifles used in our army to-day are useless weapons. A much more serviceable gun to repel a counter-attack would be one firing buckshot like a pump-gun. The bullets from our high-velocity rifles frequently pass through the body of a man at a close range and he is not even conscious of having been hit and continues to come on with as great fury as before. The pellets scattering from a shotgun at a range of a hundred yards or less would do him more damage and be far more certain to stop him. In an actual charge our present rifle is more than useless--it is an encumbrance, and when at grips with the enemy in his own trenches it is often a fatal handicap. With a bayonet at the end it is far too long, and in a trench two to four feet wide it cannot be used with much effect. I have known our men repeatedly to unship the bayonet and take it in their hands, throwing the rifle away. Another danger is that men will fire their rifles down an enemy trench and these high-velocity bullets will pass right through the bodies of the one or two of the enemy in front of him and frequently kill his own comrade beyond. Remember, in a fight in a trench friend and foe are mixed up together and many of our men have been unconsciously shot by their fellows. In every regiment a small squad of picked marksmen only should have these long-range rifles, with the addition of telescopic sights. The average man does not take exact aim before firing, and nearly all the shots go high. If it were not for bombs and machine-guns the enemy could always succeed in getting to our trenches with very little loss. It should be remembered, too, how closely, in an attack, we follow our own barrage--it is impossible to see to fire through it. The system of barrage fighting that we now use has made warfare as much a hand-to-hand business as it was in olden times and we must go back a good deal to old-fashioned weapons, as we have to a great extent to old-fashioned armor. The picked snipers or sharpshooters could be placed in points of vantage to pick off any of the enemy who exposed themselves and a score of them in each company would get very few shots in a day.