SIR, — Will you allow me a few lines anent Colonel Pollock's
proposed experiment? I have served in the Line, Militia, and Volunteers, so have some small knowledge of the matter discussed. Three thousand five hundred pounds is a con- siderable sum of money to ask for, and it seems to me the conditions of the experiment require to be stated with greater precision before your readers are likely to subscribe the sum
required.
I infer that Colonel Pollock has special qualifications for the task he proposes to undertake. His first proposition amounts to this : Given similar material, equal time, equal (or superior) training staff, equal results are promised. This appears to ins only a statement of the somewhat obvious equation r = w. Coming to the promised result No. 2, we want the conditions more fully defined. A company picked at haphazard from a Line regiment at forty-eight hours' notice would contain a consider- able proportion of men who, taken from regimental and garrison employ, had received no training for weeks, or perhaps months. I think it likely enough that at an inspection Colonel Pollock's men might appear superior, but I believe the test of war would inevitably discover the defects of a training necessarily superficial.
Colonel Pollock considers that the British recruit and his own mode of training are so superior to the Continental material and method that a fraction of the time required in the latter case will produce an equally efficient fighting man. We must all hope that he is right, and that he may be able to prove his case.
—I am, Sir, &c., WALTER B. MARLING.
Broadstairs.
Previous page
