All this is a part of the great game of war that it is most difficult to learn in times of peace. "Pretending to look for something you know isn't there," as I have heard it described, is an occupation that palls upon the dullest mind. Well do I remember many years ago forming one of a class of young officers under instruction in the use of the "Observation of Fire Instrument," which consists of a telescope fearfully and wonderfully mounted on a gigantic tripod--it is now, in the language beloved of the text-books, "becoming obsolescent," may it soon be relegated to the limbo of forgotten things! Our instructor, a highly capable but choleric major (majors always were apt to be petulant, I thought, in those days), had spent the best part of a warm June morning explaining the use of the cumbrous toy, until the whole class were sick at heart. At last he sent one of our number some distance away with orders to observe and report upon some object in the distance out to sea, the while he discoursed to the remainder. The minutes slipped by, and no word came from the keeper of the lonely vigil. "Go and see what that dam! fool is up to, sergeant-major," said our instructor. Anon the sergeant-major returned, with a face as impassive as the metal of the instrument itself. "Well?" rapped out the major. "If you please, sir, Mr. Robinson is a-studying observation on the ladies' bathing-place!" Observation, it may be repeated, is an art, but every art requires considerable training, if only in technique, before the artist can acquire perfect and instinctive expression. Where, as in the case of the art of the gunner, art leans for its support upon the strong arm of science, the probationary stage requires even more time and application on the part of the tyro. It has been said that it takes three years to teach an artillery officer the elements of his profession. It will doubtless be claimed as a triumph of foresight for our military administration that, although at the outbreak of war our heavy artillery _matériel_ was, in equipment and numbers, such as would not inspire pride in a Central American Republic, we had a large reserve of highly-trained artillery officers and men languishing in the enforced sloth of our coast fortresses all over the world. Well it is for us that this was so, for this is a war of heavy artillery, and without these men to train, command and leaven the newly formed batteries that we were forced so hurriedly to raise, our artillery would never have attained its present admitted dominance. Splendid indeed is the new material; the artillery manage to secure officers of the higher and better educated classes, and men, thanks to rigidly-enforced physical standards, of the sturdier build; all ranks are full of the interest of their new profession, enthusiastic, keen to learn, absorbing in the sharp days of war knowledge that others required the leisurely weeks of peace to acquire. Still, may the country, in its just pride in