Without any concealment I went to stay in garrison towns
where I happened to know one or two officers. I obtained introductions
to other officers, and gradually became their companion at meals and
at their evening entertainments. They mounted me on their horses, I
rode with them on their rounds of duty, and I came to be an attendant
at their field days and manoeuvres; but whenever we approached the
rifle ranges I was always politely but firmly requested to go no
further, but to await their return, since the practice was absolutely
confidential. I could gain no information from them as to what went on
within the enclosure where the rifle range was hidden.
Two of my English friends one day incautiously stopped at the entrance
gate to one of the ranges, and were promptly arrested and kept in the
guard-room for some hours, and finally requested to leave the place,
without getting much satisfaction out of it. So I saw that caution
was necessary. Little by little, especially after some very cheerful
evenings, I elicited a certain amount of information from my friends
as to what the new machine gun did and was likely to do, and how their
soldiers could of course never hit a running target, since it was with
the greatest difficulty they hit the standing one at all. But more
than this it was impossible to get.
However, I moved on to another military station, where as a stranger
I tried another tack.
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