THE BRITISH VOLUNTEERS.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1244, 2 March 1878, Page 3

THE BRITISH VOLUNTEERS.

[From the “ Dailv News,” December 15th.] According to all accounts the number of our volunteers is still on the increase. So far as can be ascertained from the reports of commanding officers furnished during the past month to the War Office, they amount to upwards of 175,000 men, all of whom have fulfilled the obligations required by the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief from the efficient volunteers. Of these 175,000 men 32.000 are artillerymen, 7000 engineers, 133.000 infantry, and the remainder mounted rifles and permanent staff. The infantry are not only tolerably disciplined and drilled, but are all of them intelligent men armed with weapons of precision, which they know full well how to use. Every rifle volunteer among them has, besides his drilling, gone through a course of musketry instruction and fired sixty rounds of ball cartridge at the butts. Or if he has not actually expended so many rounds, it is because he has proved himself a crack shot in the first score emptied from his rifle. The artillery volunteers, again, are not simply gentlemen soldiers. To earn the capitation grant and become enrolled among the available defenders of his country, a volunteer artilleryman must have taken his turn at serving the big guns attached to his battery, or must have proceeded to oue of the coast forts or to Shoeburync's to become practically acquainted with the working and training of heavy cannon. We do not expect them to act as field batteries or horse artillery, but the gunners are instructed in all the duties of coast and garrison artillery. Of cavalry we have but a few hundred among the volunteers; the deficiency in reserve horsemen is made np, however, by the yeomanry, who are supposed to muster upwards of 14,000 sabres. These, with the militia, represent our second line of defence, which may be stated in round numbers at no less than 300,000 men of all ranks. Thus, of militia, infantry, and artillery, we have 115,000, of yeomanry cavalry 14,000, and of volunteers 175,000 men.