The want of a suitable and accessible bit of ground on which to train our men is one of the chief difficulties we have to meet in the United Kingdom, and, of course, it is greatest in the case of town corps, varying with the size of towns, while in large cities ground is not to be had at all, save at a distance of several miles from the men’s dwelling places. Unfortunately, there is little doubt that the possession or lack of suitable training grounds has a great effect on the readiness, or otherwise, of troops to give a good account of themselves when they come under fire for the first time in their lives. The lack of it takes away reality from the work of the men in the ranks and cramps the initiative of their officers, who are given no opportunity to exercise their wits in figuring out practical situations which might occur on service. I can give no recipe for obtaining the use of ground, but from what I have just said I hope it is clear that the officer commanding a battalion or company should use every blandishment or art of which he is capable to get the use of a stretch of ground, and also, if it is at a distance, and the attendance of the men at parades voluntary, he should try to provide facilities for getting them to and from the ground. The worst bit of country is better than the barrack square. The ideal ground is that which gives conditions suited to each phase of the training, the principal requirements being fire positions and cover, and these should occur so as to provide illustrations of the use to be made of them in individual training, and in the collective training of sections, platoons, and the larger units. Thus, for training individual men, good ground would be that with an irregular surface, giving many places twenty to fifty yards apart, which each man could use in firing and taking cover. The usual seaside golf course of hummocks, furze bushes, and occasional watercourses, is good to teach individual men over—I say teach, for we must not imagine that an enemy will be so kind as to leave easy ground like that in his front, if he can help it. For section or platoon training, the surface should be similar, so that the individuals should still be called on to look out for their own halting places, but, in addition, there should be a certain number of small features, hillocks, banks, and so on, one to four hundred yards apart, which will serve as fire positions and cover for the whole unit, and provide the commanders with successive objectives, to which it will be their duty to bring their men in good order, and without needless exposure to the enemy’s fire. When the company is training together, the ground should be similar, but of greater extent, both broader and larger, so that sections and platoons may be practised in supporting each other, some being halted in these fire positions, and covering by their fire the movements of the others who are in process of gaining fresh vantage points. And so on for larger