To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator. Wellington, May 29, 1845.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume I, Issue 34, 31 May 1845, Page 3

To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator. Wellington, May 29, 1845.

Sir, —l enclose a translation of a report of a French officer to his government; it shows the importance of a Rocket Battery, which would, if affairs come to a crisis here, be of immense service; as we are in point of numbers much inferior to the natives, it is the duty of our governors to make up for that deficiency by supplying us with arms and ammunitions of war of the best description, and not as they have recently done, to give us old muskets for new ones, one half of which are quite unfit to put in the hands of men, who are liable to be called into immediate service. Speaking of cannon, he says, " But of all those mischief-makers, I should give the palm to the rocket. No infantiy on- earth, could stand for five minutes within five hundred yards of a well-served rocket-battery. Half-a-dozen volleys of half-a-dozen of these fiery arrows, would break the strongest battallion into fragments, lay one-half dead on the ground, and send the other blazing and torn over the field. The heaviest fire from guns is nothing to their effect. It wants the directness, the steadiness, the flarae, and, resulting from all those, the terror. If the British troops shall ever come into the field without an overwhelming force of rocketers, they will throw away the first chance of- victory that ever was lost by national negligence. Nothing can be more obvious than that this tremendous weapon has not even yet arrived at its full capacity for war on a great scale." I am, Sir, yours, &c., X. Y.