For the sake of the British officers belonging to the Madras Army, too, I was very loath to be convinced of its inferiority, for many of them were devoted to their regiments, and were justly proud of their traditions.
However, there was the army, and it was my business as its Commander-in-Chief to do all that I possibly could towards rendering it an efficient part of the war establishment of India.
Madrassies, as a rule, are more intelligent and better educated than the fighting races of northern India, and I therefore thought it could not be difficult to teach them the value of musketry, and make them excel in it.

To this end, I encouraged rifle meetings and endeavoured to get General Officers to take an interest in musketry inspections, and to make those inspections instructive and entertaining to the men.
I took to rifle-shooting myself, as did the officers on my personal staff,[3] who were all good shots, and our team held its own in many exciting matches at the different rifle meetings.
At that time the importance of musketry training was not so generally recognized as it is now, especially by the senior officers, who had all entered the service in the days of 'Brown Bess.' Some of them had failed to note the remarkable alteration which the change from the musket to the rifle necessitated in the system of musketry instruction, or to study the very different conditions under which we could hope to win battles in the present day, compared with those under which some of our most celebrated victories had been won.

It required time and patience to inspire officers with a belief in the wonderful shooting power of the Martini-Henry rifle, and it was even more difficult to make them realize that the better the weapon, the greater the necessity for its being intelligently used.
I had great faith in the value of Camps of Exercise, and notwithstanding the difficulty of obtaining an annual grant to defray their cost, I managed each year, by taking advantage of the movement of troops in course of relief, to form small camps at the more important stations, and on one occasion was able to collect 9,000 men together in the neighbourhood of Bangalore, where the Commanders-in-Chief in India and of Bombay (Sir Donald Stewart and the Hon.

Arthur Hardinge) were present--the first and last time that the 'three Chiefs' in India met together at a Camp of Exercise.

The Sappers and Miners were a brilliant exception to the rest of the Madras Army, being indeed a most useful, efficient body of men, but as no increase to that branch was considered necessary, I obtained permission to convert two Infantry regiments into Pioneers on the model of the Pioneer Corps of the Bengal Army, which had always proved themselves so useful on service.