Review to be held calculated to make

Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 426, 23 May 1871, Page 2

Review to be held calculated to make

it very interesting to the people of the city. Volunteering has unquestionably received a considerable impulse, and at no time has there previously been evinced more interest in our citizen soldiers. The recent tir federal of New Zealand having been held here, has directed attention prominently to military affairs, and this being the first general Eeview held since then, we very reasonably expect that it will be attended with corresponding eclat. A very large, probably an unusually large crowd will therefore throng to see an annual military spectacle, and the inconveniences that have attended previous reviews are likely to not only be repeated but multiplied. Experience does not prompt us to expect much savoir faire at the hands of military men. In fact, " how not to do it" rather characterises our ideas of military things. But our Volunteer system beiug a kind of cross between the civilian and the soldier, Aye may reasonably expect a modification of that fierce military disregard of popular feelings and convenience that has sometimes marked the conduct of reviews. It is, of course, the business of the crowd to keep out of the way of the Volunteers, and if the latter blaze away into the faces of the crowd, it only shows the terrible recklessness regarding human life which our defenders will show on the field of battle. It may, therefore, seem to some who are authorities on such subjects, that indifference to the common people invests the soldier with a real military dignity. Nevertheless, as it at times requires considerable and laudable self-restraiut on the part of the public to refrain from laughing at certain evolutions and positions in the mimic conflict, those charged with the conduct of affairs should do as little as possible to put the public to inconvenience, and at times annoyance—for we shall not make ourselves ridiculous by speaking of danger. Of course we are not presumptuous enough to suggest how this should be done; but we would merely hint that it might be done, as such things are managed in the lower sphere of civil i a n life. And although bungling characterised the military history ! England in latter days, it is a mistto suppose that the absence of com mon sense, necessarily evidences the possession of soldierly qualities.