TRAINING OF OFFICERS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13646, 1 February 1910, Page 6

TRAINING OF OFFICERS.

With the establishment of compulsory military training in New Zealand will necessarily come a demand for welltrained officers. With the view of providing the moens for giving the requisite instruction the Univereity Senate last week, as mentioned ekewhere, agreed to the inclusion of military science ac an optional subject in the course for the B.A. and B.Sc. degrees, the subject to include military history and strategy, Imperial defence, tactics, military topography and engineering, and military administration and law. The Senate having laid down the course of instruction in military science, it remains to be carried into practice, and the Board of Governors of Cantorbury College had) before them yesterday a puHio-spirited offer by Lieut.Colonel Heaton Rhodes, M.P., to help the Board to establish a chair of miliscience. Colonel Rhodes is prepared, if the Government establish such a. chair at Canterbury College, end make it the only chair of its kind in Isew Zealand, to give £200 a year towards the cost for three years or longer. If the Government are willing to concentrate the teaching of military science at one college—and it hap yet to be ehown that four professorships or lectureehi,rj(j are necessary—Cantorbury College hag undoubtedly the best claim, for as the chairman bas pointed out to the Government, it already provides instruction, in the Engineering School, in a number cf subjects of value to officers. "Wβ trust that the Government will considter favourably the representations of the Board, and will cnabhs it to take advantage of the generous offer that awaits its acceptance.