VOLUNTEER AND DEFENCE NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 173, 22 July 1903, Page 3

VOLUNTEER AND DEFENCE NOTES.

(By ivifleraan.)

The Cambridge olunteers held a successful annual ball on Friday last. A non-coms' examination will be held at Tauranga at the end of November. Non-commissioned officers' annual ball at St. Benedict's Hall on August 31. Annual social cf the No. 1 Natives at St. George's Hall on Friday next. The Te Puke volunteers are pressing their request to be made into a separate corps. Several non - commissioned officers were examined by Coionel Davies at the Drill Hall on Monday evening. Sergeant A. I. White, Sergeant O. Paul, and Sergeant S. Harrowell _ recently passed their sergeants' examination. Members of the Porisonby Navals (No. S Co. Artillery) wii! shoot for Mr A. Kohn's trophy on Saturday of next week. Colonel Davies, C.8., inspected the men of the- No. 1 Natives and the Newton Rifles at the Drill Hall on Monday | evening. • j The £ 1 payment to the No. S Company Artillerymen who recently passed the gunnery examination will be made on Monday next. The Te Puke volunteers will be inspected by Major Coleman on Thursday of next week, and the major proceeds South the following day. Private Cummins, of 'the No. 1 Natives, received his long-service medal from the hands of Colonel Davies at the Drill Hall on Monday last. The arms of 'the Auckland Mounted Rifles have been in the hands of the armourer, and will lie returned to the men on Thursday oi next week. An eminent English authority says that if our volunteer force were all good shots and well trained we could defy the world with a sure conviction that our defiance was not mere bravado. The Waikato Mounted Rifles are encamped on their rifle range for the week. They attended church on Sunday last, with the Cambridge Brass Band and the School Cadets. Major Coleman is with them, and a visit from Colonel Davis is expected. Regimental Sert.-Major Rolfe. of the Royal Engineers, Aldershot, England, in a letter to Mr F. Pleasants, Huntervillc, conveys the good wishes of his non-com-missioned officers to the officers of similar rank in the New Zealand Coronation Contingent. The members of the No. 1 Company N.Z. Garrison Artillery (Auckland Navals) Mill parade for gun drill every Wednesday evening during July and August, falling in at the Ferry Tee at 7.30 p.m. On Wednesday evening next they w ill meet to select gun detachments. An Imperial giatuity is being granted by the Defence Department, on application, to New Zealand contingenters who went to South Africa, under Army Order No. 150, July 20, 1900 (says a .Southern writer). The amount granted troopers is £5, and non-commissioned officers receive proportionately higher sums. Recently Private Robert Hogg, of the Highland Rifles, was lined 50/ by Mr Carcw for absenting himself from three parades. Young Hogg, not having paid the line, and there being no goods to distrain upon, was arrested and served a term of two hours' imprisonment. The volunteer authorities paid the fine, as they had no desire to be vindictive, and are satisfied with their reading of the Act having been sustained. It is said that Hogg incurred costs amounting to £25.

Messrs R. Hudson and Co., Hogg's employers, wrote to a Southern paper as follows:—"As it is well known that Mr Robert Hogg has been our principal invoice, shipping and Customs clerk for a considerable time, we trust you will alloAV us to say, now that he has been taken from his desk by a policeman and imprisoned, that we have all along consider that he was being harshly treated. We assure your readers that at the time Avlien the parades occurred, for non-attendance at which he was fined, it was quite impossible for him to be away from business; indeed, the whole of last season was a trying one for him. We wrote to the O.C. in Otago to that effect, and it is a cause of surprise and regret to us that the penal clause of the Defence Act should have been' enforced as has been done."'