posing the Army Council had refused to listen to his urgings, he
would have received satisfaction on representing the matter to the
Committee of Imperial Defence.

As a matter of fact, it was only after more than one representation
made by General von Donop that G.H.Q. agreed to take some
high-explosive ammunition, and so it was introduced--in small
quantities--very soon after fighting began, and when the urgent need
of it had become apparent. But the output was necessarily very
restricted for a long time, and no amount of talk and of bounce, such
as the Minister of Munitions was wont to indulge in from the summer of
1915 onwards for several months, would have increased it. Here was a
case of an entirely new article, for the provision of which no steps
had been taken before the war. There happened to be special technical
difficulties in the way of producing the article, _e.g._ the hardness
of the steel necessary for this type of shell, and devising a safe and
effective fuse. There is, moreover, one matter in connection with this
question of high-explosive for our 18-pounders which should be
mentioned, but to which no reference finds a place in "_1914_."

Some months after this ammunition first came to be used in the field
it began to give serious trouble. Something was wrong. The shell took
to bursting in the bore of the gun and to bulging, or wholly
destroying, the piece, although these disasters fortunately did not
generally involve loss of life. Between August and October 1915, no
less than sixty-four of our 18-pounders were thus rendered
unserviceable--very nearly double the number lost during the retreat
from Mons, and considerably more than the complement of one of our
divisions. We could not comfortably afford this drain upon our supply
of field-guns at a time when New Army divisions were still in some
cases gun-less, and when the Territorial division were still armed
with the virtually obsolete 15-pounder. Accidents of this character,
moreover, have a bad effect upon the personnel of batteries, for the
soldier does not like his weapon, be it a rifle, or a hand-grenade, or
a sabre that crumples up, to play tricks on him. The difficulty was
not got over until elaborate experiments, immediately set on foot by
the War Office (which still dealt with design and investigation,
although actual manufacture was by this time in the hands of the
Ministry of Munitions), had been carried out. But before the end of
the year