The Pox Defence Proposals.

Observer, Volume XIV, Issue 793, 10 March 1894, Page 3

The Pox Defence Proposals.

Sib Welliam Jebvois has set Colonel Fox down very badly in his memorandum concerning the famous Fox report upon the defences of New Zealand. Probably the Government will now recognise the desirableness of abandoning its fatuous policy of carrying out some of the more absurd and extravagant of these Fox proposals. Take, for instance, the recommendation that the six-inch b.l. guns should be sent Home for ' hoop-chasing.' One competent authority after another condemned this aa an unwarrantable and profitless waste of public money, and again and again the Observes urged that we might as well throw £9000 into the sea as spend it for such a purpose.

But these protests were all of no avail. The Government were charmed for the time being with Colonel Fox's ideas. The Colonel ought to know, they reckoned, and there was no use paying him a big salary if they did not give effect to the schemes evolved from bis fertile mind. And so it was decided that these guns should be sent Home as proposed for • hoop-chasing.' The idea was to make them safer and enable larger charges to be fired from them, though, by the way, the probabilities are a hundred to one that they will never be used except for drill purposes and practice.

And now Sir William Jervoig has written condemning the whole thing. He is an unquestionable authority himself, but he has gone beyond his own opinions by taking the advice of both official and private persons of competent knowledge. He does not think there is any necessity whatever for the ' hoop-chasing, and he finds that the most competent authorities are agreed that these guns may be safely fired with full charges in their present condition. So much for the Fox recommendation about ' hoop-chasing.' Sir William is equally rough on Borne of the Colonel's other recommendations. And yet the Government are pretty certain to carry them into effect. They seem to be bewitched by the Colonel and his ideas on defence. Why, those six-inch guns are already on the way to England for 'hoop-chasing,' and the Colony is committed to a useless expenditure of £9000 on alterations that Sir William Jervois says are not required.