TEE PROPOSAL TO SEND A TEAM TO DISLEY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12240, 8 April 1903, Page 5

TEE PROPOSAL TO SEND A TEAM TO DISLEY.

[l)T TELEGRAPH. —OWN COHKBSPONDENX.] CaEisTciiTjKcii, Tuesday. Commenting on the proposal to send a. team from New Zealand to Bisley, the Press remarks that although,- if they are going, the men will have to leave in less than a fortnight the scheme is still in the clouds, and it expresses a hope that it will stay there, as the cost of the team, which- would be between £1500 and £2000, could bo more profitably expended in other ways. No one will pretend." continues the Press, " that the visit of a team to Bisley will be of the slightest benefit to the volunteer force of the colony. The men who would be sent would b-» experienced shots with little to learn 1 of the art of shooting, and it is doubtful whether any additional wrinkles they picked up would be of any real service, either to them or to the younger men. If the Government really want to encourage good shooting there are plenty of other ways of doing it. They might, for example, spend the money in providing good ranges in the colony. The Auckland range is described as a disgrace to the Defence Department, and there are other centres where the volunteers are greatly handicapped. Increased assistance to the Trentham meeting to be devoted to matches under service conditions, would also do more to increase the efficiency of the volunteers than would the animal despatch of a Bisley team for a generation." The writer goes on to urge that more matches under service conditions should find a place cut the Trentham programmes. "We are training now," he says, " as we have done for 50 years, a race of ' range marksmen' —men who can do wonders with a rifle if they have at command a whole list of accessories. What we want is for our riflemen to depend less on wind gauges and flags, and more on their brains and eyes, and their unaided skill with the rifle. The Commander-in-Chief's match, the Colonial Ammunition Company's Cup, and the teams' match, as conducted at Trentham, approach more nearly to the conditions of active service than any others. Instead of these matches being left to the last day of the meeting we would have them and others like them, made the most prominent events of the week. We would have them count for the belt, and the champion rule shot of New Zealand should bo the man whose fire would be most deadly in war, not as now, the most accurate shot under conditions that have never occurred in war since gunpowder was invented."