ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 83, 10 April 1900, Page 2

ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES.

(From Our London Correspondent.) LONDON, February 23. COLONIAL SE/UIPSHOOTERS. GILBERT PARKER'S SUGGESTIONS. [ don't know whether Mr Gilbert Parker's reminder that the troopers o£ the Colonial Forces are generally socially superior to Mr Thomas Atkins and hos comrades, and reach a higher level of intelligence, is altogether discreet, but 'tis certainly true and should times become slack, the fact might lead to a little friction. Otherwise Mr Parker's remarks are admirable. He writes: —"One cannot recommend too strongly the employment of sharpshooters, and at this moment especially of the Australian marksmen from "the back blocks' and the Canadian sharpshooters from 'out West* who live on their horses and live bji their rifles, as it were. Fortunately the value of these men is becoming known. Ten thousand sharpshootera from England and the colonies should do powerfully useful work against tha Boers. We are, happily, outgrowing j j our insularity and self-satisfaction. We | j have learned that we cannot 'just buck ! our way through," as a cavalry officer ; of high position said to me a short j time ago. You cannot buck a great i deal against modern rifle fire from be« j hind good entrenchments. Twomonths I ago before we had so many reverses 1 urged at a public meeting the em- '■. ployment of colonial forces, the hard bitten riders and shots of the plains ; and bush, and said, 'What would bfl our position in. the world if the colon-, ! ies were not with us, morally, in this ' | war?' It was clear that our prestige \ I Would be destroyed if Canada or Australia hung back or disapproved. It I was also certain that these riders and j riflemen from Canada and Australia i reach a higher level of intelligence i | than the ordinary soldier here—rea- j : sons are not far to seek—and that they j i would be useful accordingly. The re- j ply of one speaker was, 'This is a matter that England can settle for herself without help. What do they know of England Who only England kno-w. I | England has learned that she does not ■' stand alone; also that she cannot ' stand alone as an Empire without : drawing upon the varied, useful, and : higly intelligent forces which she has set in motion in different parts of her ' great'dominion. The most popular I poet of the Empire came out of India,and the greatest general yet of our ! time may yet come out. of Australia, jln the meantime, men who are sug--i gesting such schemes as you are sup- { porting are doing the work of trained I staff officers, and we can easily inI crease the usefulness of that portion lof our military nvpanisation without ! fear of overdoing it." j Sir James Fergusson later points out the organisation already afoot, mid called the Mounted Volunteer Sharpshooters Corps, for service in South Africa (as part of the Imperial Yeomanry force) fulfils nißny of the requirements of the "St. James1 Ga-

zette" and other critics. Sir James then repeats at length the special conditions and equipment of this force, and hints the newspapers should be satisfied. Not at all. After a growl at the employment of the Lee-Enfield rifle by this extra special corps, your contemporary says: — "Sir James Fergusson has evidently missed the chief point we have been endeavouring to make clear. It is not merely a matter of finding good shots and giving them equipment. The important consideration is the use to be made of them in the field when we have got them. The tactics we recommend in conjunction with the employment of picked sharpshooters do not appeare ever to have occurred as yet to the promoters of the organisation to which Sir James Fergusson calls our attention. Nor does he seem to realise the importance of absolute accuracy in the weapon and the sights."'