OUR DEFENCES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10032, 20 January 1896, Page 3

OUR DEFENCES.

TO TUB EDITOR. Sir,—lt must he very comforting to be assured that the defences of our colony are fully equal to meet any emergency that may arise at any momcut, but to those particular people who like to look behind the scenes, not trusting solely to the lively imagination or the (military experiences of our .Defence Ministers, facts, not figures alone, dispel doubts. Now, what are the facts as regards Auckland? In the district we have an efficient field artillery corps, the "A" battery, two naval artillery corps and a torpedo ditto, a newly-raised volunteer company. and the ghosts of two other companies struggling for existence. Why is this? Why has volunteering become a failure here? How is it that during the past few years no less than nine corps have become defunct? Chiefly from the lack of Government support. Certainly we have as Defence Minister the Prime Minister of New Zealand, who, like Bottom the Weaver, is ready at any time to undertake any office. But is he qualified for such a responsible position ? Let us take him'at his own words. During the Kifle Meeting of the past year he was solicited for the continuation of the allowance of free railway passes to volunteer shootists, which in his wisdom he had stopped. Mark his reply s—" Shooting is a luxury, not a necessity." Compare this with tho following extract from a speech mc.de by his deputy, Sir P. Buckley, a man that had burnt powder in earnest warfare at a former rifle meeting" He looked upon accurate shooting as the most essential part oi a volunteer," What are volunteers for if not to shoot well! Will their martial presence alone scare the enemy from our coasts ? II so, the sooner we adopt the Chinese fashion of dressing our warriors with decorations prim and fantastic the better, and thus save the expense of military tailoring. If shooting be a luxury, and not an esspntial, I am afraid that if our opponents alone possess the qualification enjoyed by the Boers the luxury will become a very onesided one, our poor fellows forming living targets for our friends', tho enemies, special diversion. No, before our defences can be considered reliable, we must have trained men, such as the volunteers of the Old Country, forces able to take their stand as portions of the regular army—shootists capable of acting individually as units. Then as regards the vaunted supply of rifles. Has our Defence Minister been napping that he has forgotten that the Martini-Henry rifle is becoming an obsolete weapon, and that an invading army may probably be armed with the more modern magazine rifle; and does he consider tho few distributed over the whole of New Zealand sufficient? I will not enter into the question of mines, fearing that some who may have witnessed the drill of our volunteer infantry may become nervous, imagining that the mines may have been laid with an equal skill.—l am, etc., One Wno Sees. TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— your columns this morning a correspondent suggests the necessity oi making Rangitoto a fortification, having heavy guns to repel an enemy's warships, 1 do not think such a fortification would possess much value, but rather would be a source of danger. When the enemy comes he will have besides the best ships a landing party of perhaps 2000 men. His first step would be to capture Rangitoto and its big guns and fortifications, then occupy such a fortification greatly to our detriment. Of course you say sucha thing cannot happen. But we must remember that we are not a war-loving race. On sight of the enemy nine-tenths of our population would clear out of Auckland for Waitakerei or the Waikato, and the few spiritless and untrained soldiery that remainetf would not show much of a fight, England and her colonies have had no wars to speak of for nearly a century. The effect of this long spell of peace is shown in the Uitlanders spirit in the Transvaal. This same spirit of compromising with the enemy would be as much in evidence here as ' in Johannesburg. No doubt we appear to a stranger very brave in standing punishment from one another, and one might reason therefrom that such a people will bear a lot of punishment from the enemy; but the kind of punishment we can stand from our masters is not warlike, _ I refer to the outrageous fines and penalties borne by certain citizens who in another part of your paper I see were punished for withholding a halfholiday from some employees. In another part of your paper I see a caution under the Stamp Act, wherein if a man does not write the transferee's name in ink he will be fined £100, and, if a licensed broker, will for ever lose his calling. Now, your reader may say, What has this to dp with defences to our harbour ? But I wish just to hint that we are not a warlike race; in that respect we 1 have run to seed. We have become like other weak races you read of in history, somewhat pusillanimous, and we bend low in the dust to the persecuting majority who excel in the great number of laws they pass and penalties they enact. As a means of creating a more manly ogd true soldier-like spirit,, I would suggest, in the first place, • that our suffrage should give two votes, one for man and womanhood, another for thrift; then, secondly, I would counsel the formation of a camp somewhere near Long Bay, about four miles along the coast from L«ke Takapuna. A defence corps of 2000 men . could be formed in our city, and see that every man spent at least 30 days in each year in such camp, and that he was rn&de . efficient and familiar with the use of all kinds , of arms. Such a camp might cost £50,000 to 'v,; erect, and it would have to be supported by a,. railway and bridge across our harbour, but ■ even if it cost £250,000 it wonid be a "good K>: investment for tho biggest city in New Zealand.—l am, etc., Lance-Corporai* ■»>