BIG v. SMALL BULLETS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—Colonel Slade's plea that the Small Arms Committee took more than three years to decide between the weapons before them hardly avails. It cannot either be said that the admitted advantages of the Lee-Metford rifle—great range, low trajectory, amount of ammunition carried—counter- balance its one great defect. It fails in the first object of a military weapon,—to kill, or at least to disable an enemy sufficiently to stop him on the spot. Wild talk about the size of the bullet necessary to do this is useless. 'Brown Bess' did it in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, and her ball was not the "size of an orange." The Small Arms Committee had better experiment again till they have found a rifle that will do the same. Of course the more rounds a man can carry the better; but, whether as General or as private soldier, I would rather go into action with seventy, or even with fifty, rounds that would do their work than with a hundred and fifteen that I knew would not. "A Marksman's" letter amounts to this,—that the Lee-Metford is an efficient rifle if used with explosive bullets; but it is one thing to fire explosive bullets against wild horses, another to use them in warfare against human beings,—a practice condemned, I believe, by the universal consent of civilised Europe.—I am,
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