To practise the execution of work, you _must_ have ground which you are at liberty to turn up, as well as some materials for loop-holes and obstacles. These may not be obtainable at any and every parade, but you can give practice in the selection and siting of trenches on any bit of country without causing damage, the men merely spitlocking or marking with stones or anything else the position of the trenches on the surface of the ground, and describing what they propose doing. I would, therefore, advise that you make your training consist of two parts, firstly the siting of trenches and the planning by unit commanders and men of defensive work, the choice and occupation of alternative positions, and the assumption of the offensive from the defensive, all this without actually breaking ground, and, secondly, ground and tools being then available, the performance of a course of making real cover and obstacles. But the first part cannot be carried out unless the men have a knowledge of what trenches, loop-holes and so on are like, and the objects with which they are made. In a company of raw recruits taken from the populace at large, there will be plenty who have no ideas on the subject at all. You must then precede your exercises either by a short lecture, materials for which you will find in plenty in the “Defence of Duffer’s Drift,” and the manuals of training, or, better than a lecture, by showing them specimens of entrenchments made by regular troops. The main points to insist on are the securing of a field of fire, the necessity of concealment of the defences, the importance of head cover as a help to the delivery of an accurate fire by letting men keep the enemy in view without showing up themselves, the avoidance of enfilade fire by making traverses, or by taking advantage of intervening high ground, the provision of cover from downward shell fire by making the trenches deep and steep enough to let men stand close up to the edges, and, in the case of isolated posts and points held as pivots of a position, the necessity of preparing an all-round defence so that these pivots will be able to continue fighting whatever happens on the intervening ground. The course of work actually performed for the second part should include digging all kinds of trenches, by which the men will learn to use their tools to the best advantage, and their hands and muscles will become hardened, the use of the excavated earth to form parapets and parados (cover from fire from the rear of the trench; forty inches of earth are needed to keep out a bullet), the drainage of trenches, the making of traverses against enfilade fire, the making of loop-holes and head-cover with the aid of all sorts of materials, sand bags, brushwood and heather, straw and twigs, stones and bricks (which must be covered with earth to deaden the effects of splinters), packing boards, and so on, the concealment of trenches and loop-holes so as to be invisible to the enemy (this is of great