The Madsen Machine Gun

[LORDS] The Madsen 7 thing occur then. I think the complement 1 of a six-inch breech-loader was about 110 i'ounds, and that of a quick-firer six-inch । gun went up to I think 300 rounds. With heavy guns we have more ammunition and have to carry more, but the argument about the ammunition has been used every time and on every occasion of an improve- ment in the guns, and has always been falsified when we have got into action and had to use the guns. Now the Danish gun has fired 18,000 rounds an hour, and the Lewis gun 3,000 rounds an hour—at that rate. Another point about the Danish gun is that if it misses fire, which jams most of these machine-guns, by the lever in the right hand side the cartridge is ejected and the gun goes on firing. It is a question of two seconds, and so the gun cannot be jammed because the cartridge misses fire. The magazine feed is a wonderful inven- tion. The magazine itself is a shell—a curved piece of aluminium. I have seen men walk over it, and horses can walk over it, and it is much lighter than the magazine of any other machine-gun and much stronger, and it has the advantage of being able to be refilled with its forty- four cartridges in half the time. After 1,000 rounds the Danish Madsen gun gets red hot—the barrel. That barrel can be shifted in fifteen" seconds with bare hands —I have seen it done—because, as I have already explained to your Lordships, the casing and the magazine do not get hot , as it is a recoil operation and not a gas operation for loading and working the gun. The Lewis gun gets hot in 500 rounds, and takes twenty minutes to cool before you. can again use it. The Danish gun can change the barrel in fifteen seconds; the Lewis gun may take twenty minutes before you can change the barrel. The Lewis gun gets hot in 500 rounds, the Hotchkiss in 800 rounds, and the Madsen in 1,000 rounds. In my opinion the Danish gun is superior in all respects, and mightily su- perior, to the Lewis and the Hotchkiss. The Lewis is the g-un of the Infantry upon which we depend for our victory or defeat in the future, and the Hotchkiss is the Caval'ry gun. Neither of these arms compares with the Danish gun in efficien- cy, rapidity of firing, lightness, and few- ness of spare parts, or in any other re- Lord Beresford. 8 (jitn. spect that appertains to an efficient ma- chine-gun. Now, this gun has been tested. It was tested in the Machine-Gun School in Fran- ce in 1915, and was strongly recommen- ded. When Lord Kitchener was Minister for War in 1915,, and when Lord French » had seen or heard about the gun, 2,000 of these guns were ordered for the Army. The Naval Machine-Gun School at Whale Island—the most critical school of gun- nery in the world—tried the weapon thoroughly and repeatedly, and reported strongly in its favour. When Mr. Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty after this report he ordered 400 of these guns. Further, the Small Arms Committee School of Musketry at Hythe tested it in January, 1915, and reported most satisfactorily on the results of the gun. A large number of machine-gun experts—officers and men who have been fighting these guns since the war commenced, some of them as far back as Mons—took this gun and tried it exhaustively, and last month they unani- mously and strongly recommended it as the very best weapon of the sort they had ever seen. I believe the Ministry of Munitions recommended its introduction into the Service. I think the present Prime Minister when he was at the Ministry of Munitions ordered 5,000 of them, and, your Lordships must remember that the Latest pattern Madsen gun is infinitely superior to the Madsen gun of two years ago. All these inlprovements have been made in the last two years and have put this gun right at the top of the tree, so far as a gun of that character can go. Now, may I give my own experiences of the gun. I have stated various points which I think are most interesting, and I may say most marvellous, relative to the extraordinary superiority that has been brought about in this gun over other guns. I saw these trials carried out last month—everything that I have told your Lordships with one exception. I have not seen 18,000 rounds fired, but I have seen 2,000 rounds fired. I saw some eight or ten trained machine-gunners from various regiments who have been fighting machine- guns in the field. These men tried this gun, took it to pieces, assembled it, fired it, and fired it standing and kneeling without any support, and I asked each one