TEMUKA.

Press, Volume L, Issue 15123, 12 November 1914, Page 2

TEMUKA.

The animation in the ranks of-Rifle Clubs in South Canterbury 6peaks. volumes for the impetus given to patriotism and self-defence by the great "war. In Temukc the membership of the Rifle Club is larger than that of the Territorial Company, and includes bankers, painters, clergymen, drapers, chemists, grocers, furniture-makers, bacon-<*urers, lawyers, journalists, labourers, and even anti-militarists. It was a pleasure, on Tuesday evening last, to see a cosmopolitan crowd of forty citizens marching up and down the drillshed, performing military evolutions to "which quite a number a week or two ago were entire strangers. The whole Defence Club movement smacks strongly of the old Volunteer movement (animated with new life),* -which hundreds of keen supporters of the present Territorial scheme argue .-warmly should never have

been discouraged and finally abandoned. The Temuka Club, whose membership ia eighty, parades every fortnight, and indulges in range firing and musketry courses every week (Thursday). With this sort of enthusiasm permeating all classes in the comnninity, tho time should not be far distant when NewZealand should become a really formidable proposition to any possible invading Power —a second Switzerland.