Volunteer Items

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 46, 5 October 1889, Page 3

Volunteer Items

« ,An ex-captain-commandant of volunteers makes the following Teply to Inspector Hume's condemnation of the system under which volunteers elect their officers :— lt makes all the difference how we look at volunteering. There is the view taken by military and ex-militar3 r officers on the one hand and by volunteers on the other, I look from a volunteer point of view, and as a matter of course, I wear volunteer glasses to see through, and it will take some argumeut to persuade me that, they are the wrong color. One of the greatest privileges the voluuteers have is the choice of their own officers. I grant the choice has not been a very wise one in every instance, but the unwise choice has been the exception. I believe the choice of good officers by the volunteers has given a far higher percentage than the percentj age of good officers in the Imperial service by purchase ; or than the chice of militia officers by the authorities. I have served by the side of militia officers and felt ashamed of them ; I have also served for short periods with officers of the Jine, and never felt that I was out of place, or that the volunteers who had elected nn had reason to be ashamed of their choice ; and the volunteer officers who were inferior to me in their qualifications were the exception. Ido not despise schools of instruction, but the mere theory is not everything. Where did Hampden and Cromwell get their training ? Yet they made themselves terrors to their adversaries. When the time comes that volunteers cease to elect their own officers, etc., then I think volunteeriug will haye received its death-blow. — Dunedin Star.