ANECDOTE OF SIR COLIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6255, 3 December 1881, Page 7

ANECDOTE OF SIR COLIN.

Brigadiers, and those who have to give words of command in the field, must feel anything but grateful to Mr. Childers for lengthening the titles of regiments. Some of these titles are magnificent mouthfuls, to pronuunce which, with proper emphasis, will delay not a little any military manoeuvre. Some were surely long enough already, if I may judge by what my memory recalls to me of a field day, when the 4th Foot being ordered to advance, the colonel of that distinguished corps commenced giving the word, "Fourth King's Own Royal Regiment"—but had only got so far when that mild-mannered soldier, the late Sir William Eyre, cut in with, "I don't care who the devil owns you; but come on." This was not polite, especially as ladies were present, but what is a commander, who is in a hurry to execute an important manoeuvre to do? At the ba tie of Balaclava, when the Russian cavalry were about to swoop down upon the thin red line of Highlanders, the shout of Sir Colin Campbell, "Ninety-third we must all die here," had a magnificent eftect of making the line as steady as a rock. But if history had to repeat itself, the command which the old chieftain would have to give to-day would be, " Second Battalion of the Princess Louise's Sutherland and Argyll Highlanders," &c. I fancy Sir Colin would have added an oath had he been so compelled by War Office authority to waste his breath.— World.