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New Zealand Mail, Issue 421, 6 March 1880, Page 7

There is evidently very little dread of war, or war’s alarms, in Victoria. While New Zealand discusses the desirability of organising & more permanent military force and of improvingthe Volunteer organisation, our Victorian neighbors are retrenching. The Age, referring to the death of Captain Stubbs, and the proposal to appoint a successor on the Btaff of the Colonel-commandant, says :—“lt is doubtful whether any fresh appointment of the kind will be made. The Treasurer, in his capacity of Minister of War, is rather inclined to think it is an opportune time to make some extensive retrenchments in that branch of the public service. There is scarcely any raison dJetre for the continuation of an expensive staff of military officers having little or no duties to perform. All further recruitic g of the Victorian garrison detachment has been suspended, and in the process of time the men already enrolled will be absorbed into the police or penal department service. In the general necessity and desire for retrenchment and curtailment of expenditure there is nothing to prevent the disbandment of the garrison and the reduction of the Btaff to proportions simply adequate to the maintenance of the volunteer organisation.” 1