THE COLONIAL FORCES.

Grey River Argus, Volume VII, Issue 504, 8 April 1869, Page 3

THE COLONIAL FORCES.

In an article on our past disasters at Patea and Wanganui, the Army and Navy Gazette says :-*- --"Verily Sir Duncan Cameron and his army have their revenge. Sad as the events lately reported from Patea and Wanganui arc, they will have their use if they teach our journalists and their hu'iiblor but very similarly - minded brethren at the Antipodes not to rail in future at tho regular soldier because he uses caution where caution i 3 wisdom, and discerns difficulties whore difficulties exist by nature. To judge from the leaders in London dailies and Auckland tri-weeklies of three years since, one would have supposed that nothing short of great timidity, added to the grossest dnlness, could have been the reasons that the whole Northern Island was not overrun with ease by the Imperial forces in a single campaign. Where are those critics who informed us that the only thing required at New Zealand was to remove our slow and heavily armed batteries, and entrust the war to the settlers ? These would require no heavy guns for roads, we heard ; no base of communication ; hot even any baggage. Stripped of the cumbrous paraphernalia of civilized war, the lightly-armed volunteer would plunge briskly into the bush, and, meeting the dusky foe at his own weapon, force him to acknowledge the superiority of the nobler race. Some doubted this, nevertheless. There were those who knew that, the Maoris had been aucustomed to war from their youth up, and trained to carry muskets in the bush from the first time that the philanthropic merchants of Sydney sent them supplies of arms to compete with the missionaries in the race of civilization ; whereas the ordinary New Zealand settler seldom keeps a gun, and, having nothing to shoot and plenty of other occupation, forgets the little cunning his early poaching (if a countryman), or potting at frost-stiffened larks (if a townbred emigrant), may have given him. Brave as men with military titles will fancy themselves till tested, probably some of the poor fellows who were slaughtered like rats in a trap by Titokowaru's ambushed savages must have had faint doubts beforehand as to whether their dozen squad drills would carry them safely through a real fight. Any one who knew the two parties to be engaged might have predicted the result, although the utter collapse of the Volunteer movement, as hitherto tried in New Zealand, could hardly have been fully foreseen. Let the Wellington Independent, a staunch abuser of the regulars in 1863-4, speak for itself of the direct results of the battle. — [An extract is then taken from the Wellington Independent, in which the following words are italicised :— 'To restore that, to avenge our loss, and to crush the rebels of those West Coast hapus it will be necessary to constitute a small force of well-trained men, and maintain them permanently.'] — In the lines of the foregoing extract which we have italicised lies the pith of the question ; for the present proposal of the Independent is simply to raise a colonial regular army, instead of mustering colonial Volunteers and Militia, ' who won't come* say the reports from Hawke's Bay and tie East Coast, as well as those from Wanganui 'when yon *do call them.' Thin arises the question of expenses. The Times within the last few days suggested, m a patronising and unconcerned way, that the colonists should raise an efficient body of 2500 men. The least expense we have heard such a force estimated at by those who know New Zealand prices is from 5s to 6s a day, say LIOO a-year each, for the privates ! What the war will cost we do not pretend to say. Two things we believe to be certain already, besides the fact that an internecine struggle of race is begun. The ridiculous and false humanitarianism which has prevented us freely employing the friendly natives hitherto will now be utterly laid aside ; and the mother country, if not called upon for soldiers, will indubitably have to give material aid by lending her credit at least to her suffering and panicstricken offspring." ________«