The Madsen Machine Gun

3 The Madsen [LORDS] Gun. 4 to write a letter about his gun. I said »I cannot do that. If your gun is a good gun I shall try to get it into our Service.« He said »Every man has his price,« and he asked me my price. I said »Yes, that is quite true; my price is £3,000,000.« He put on his hat and said he thought he could get xbetter than me cheaper than that,« and I never saw him again. Then I mounted the gun in the Sudan. I must tell your Lordships that these guns were originally mounted as guns-—that is to say, they not only had the gun carriage • but they had the limber—and in the Su- dan, where you have suddenly to go into i action, it delayed you a great deal (more particularly when fighting in a square) if you had a limber. I invented a gun on two wheels pivoted in the middle as if it , was a limber, and on the same lines as a | limber, but it was in action directly the train was dropped, either front, rear, rig'ht, or left. Personally I have used in action the Gatling, the Gardner, and the Nordenfeldt; and what made me think of the galloping carriage was that at Alexandria, where I was landed to restore order, I had only one machine-gun, but my men had to haul it, and naturally they got exhausted. We did not fire into those unfortunate people; we fired ovei‘ their j heads; but by the machine-gun we were enabled to clear the town of those people much more quickly than we could by any other means. All the guns I have descriped, of which I had command in those days, were faulty. They were faulty because you had to do four things at once, and if any one of those things went wrong it put the gun out of action.. You had to load, fire, extract the c^mpty cylinder, and revolve the gun; and if any one of those things went wrong it jammed the gun and put it out of action. I have very good reason to remember this jamming of the gun, because at Abu Ktea we had a machine-gun of which I was in command. We ran it out on the left flank, which was attacked. I was laying the gun myself, and the effect of it on the crowd of Arabs coming on was extraordinary. They were falling like ninepins in tens and twenties; but when they got within about 30 yards the gun jammed. We had the feed-plate lifted up to try and find out the cylinder which had the flange Lord Beresford pulled off the extractor, and the first sign I had was the feed-plate hitting me on the head and knocking me under. As a matter of fact that saved my life, because every other man with the gun was killed. These guns have never been appreciated. The first machine-guns in action were the French mitrailleuse in 1870. The Germans were so afraid of these guns that they devoted the whole of their Artillery batteries to putting them out of action. They nearly always succeeded in <JL°ing this, because the French worked the guns as batteries instead of working them as sub- divisions independently. By sub-divisions I mean a battery of six guns, half-battery three guns; two guns is a division, and one gun a sub-division. These guns ought to be worked in sub-divisions, and close together where they can get cover and in other cases far apart. The only time they ever really got into action against the Germans was at Mars-la-Tour, where they managed to get two batteries going with- out being interfered with by artillery. They killed thousands of Germans, and, incidentally, cut a Whole avenue of poplars straight off exactly as if the trees had been cut down by swords. As a matter of fact, a few months after this occurred I was there and saw it myself. There have been immense improvements made in the machine-gun. When we went to war we had only two guns to each battalion; the Germans had sixteen guns to each battalion, and they took to the machine-gun many years after we knew all about it. The advantage of a machine-gun is that it has no nerves; it is no target; and six of them are equal to any battalion of Infantry you might select working with rifles. When speaking of this Mad- sen gun I would say that I have no per- sonal interest in it of any sort or kind. I have thoroughly examined it; I have seen it practised; and I firmly believe that it is the most wonderful gun that 'has ever been invented, and that it is imperative that we should get it into our service. I think it would be far wiser to call it a machine-rifle and not a machine- gun, because it really is a rifle. Let me now refer your Lordships to the weights of the different guns. We have three guns in the Service now—the Lewis for the trenches and Infantry; the Hotch-