VOLUNTEER CAMPS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9254, 5 June 1908, Page 3

VOLUNTEER CAMPS.

■»- . . DOES DRINKING GO. ON? [From Otjb Correspondent.] WELLINGTON, June 4. Mrs W. J. Williams' statements at a No-license meeting in the Vi-vian Street Church were submitted to the actingMinister of Defence (Hon R. M'Nab) to-day. The Minister is a Volunteer officer of long service, and also an axdent advocate of temperance and himself a teetotaller. Mrs Williams referred to the camps, unless a radical change was effected, as nurseries for inebriate asylums, and also said that she could not persuade a young Volunteer to sign the pledge because he said he was going into camp at Easter, and the inference was that he would not be able to keep it in consequence. "I would like to know something more about that young man," observed Mr M'Nab, " before I would attach weight to what he said. Ido not doubt the lady told the truth as she learned it, but l^t me tell you my experience of Volunteer camps. It goes back to 1886, and has lasted until the I present time, although not continuously in camps. I nave commanded infantry companies, I have commanded a field artillery battery and a mounted rifle battery. I suppose I have been in some twelve or thirteen camps, and in addition to that I have beeu in I camps in the position of field officer, also as umpire, where my duties ranged over contending camps and covered the whole field of operations. . I have also been at ten Volunteer camps in connection with the New Zealand Rifle Association and in other smaller meetings. In all my experience I can only recall one case of a camp -where there was any drunkenness, and in that case the men concerned arrived in the camp intoxicated." " From my own experience of New Zealand Volunteers," concluded Mi M'Nab, "I do not believe the statement made to Mrs Williams that drinking is so rife in the camps that a man cannot sign the pledge on account of the conditions prevailing in the New Zealand camps."