IMPERIAL DEFENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15390, 27 August 1913, Page 13

IMPERIAL DEFENCE.

KING EDWARD'S HORSE.

[FROM OUR OWN COEEESrOXPENT.] London, July 18. Colonel A. W. Robin, £?ew Zealand Staff Corps, represented the Dominion at the annual dinner of King Edward's Horse this week, when the Duke of Teck presided over a large assembly. Included in the ranks of King Edward's Horse are many New Zenlanders and Australians resident in London. In proposing the- toast of the regiment, the chairman said that its history, though brief, was long enough to establish it as an Imperial asset of the first value and importance. Australia and New Zealand had accepted it as a training unit for their own forces, and they might hope that others would follow their example. Colonel Seely had told him that on the occasion of the Liverpool turn-out every man was on parade. The fact that the regiment was liable for foreign service gave it an especial position in England, in which it was only rivalled by the Irish Horse. Long might peace endure for this country, but it was not amiss for those who took an interest, in the welfare of King Edward's Horse to remember that that corps was one of the first to go to the front, and it would thus justify not- only its constitution, but its association with the name of fhe great monarch who was at once its sponsor and its friend. Colonel Seely said the regiment formed the germ of a great ideal, towards which thev all ought to work— ideal of one Imperial Army. There might be diversities of conditions, of training, and of climate, but the ideal they had to seek for was that of one army for 'the purpose of safeguarding the great Dominions of the King. Was it not, indeed, fitting that this regiment should be named after the great King who was the greatest friend of peace that our generation had known, and that the great King who now rules over us should 1 have honoured it by becoming its colonel-in-chief, seeing that he was the first Sovereign of these realms who knew their people by meeting them face to face. He had no doubt that as time went on this thing which the regiment had begun would spread beyond the limits they now saw. All parts of the Empire had now made up their minds to bear a common share in defence, and one feature of this corps which was of peculiar interest "was that service in it was interchangeable with service in the Dominions.