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Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1266, 28 April 1880, Page 2

TTati not our correspondent " Bombshell," whose letter appeared in our last issue, drawn attention to a letter bearing the signature of " Howitzer," which appeared lately in the Lyttelton Times, we should not have taken any notice of the matter, for- two reasons : First, because we thought our coiTespondent had said sufficient upon the matter of the want of fairness shown by the Cliristchurch Artillery in their competitions with the southern Artillery corps 5 an 4, secondly, because we have an objection to reply to the remarks of anonymous correspondents. But the matter having been brought prominently under the notice of the public, we deem it necessary to demonstrate that our special correspondent's remarks were... well grounded. " Howitzer" is good enough to stigmatise our correspondent's remarks as falsehoods, and attempts to show that he is ignorant of gunnery. He also attempts to show that the only dispute was attributable to the Dunedin men. Jjet us take the last matter first, and see what the cause of this dispute was. In passing we xnny remark that the whole thing was the result of the trickery practised, or the ignorance as to theij: duties displayed by, the Christchurch detachment, Well, for the gratification of (f Howitzer,'' we may remark that it did not require a vast amount of knowledge of gunnery to detect the trickery practised by the Christchurch detachment. May we not conclude that when No. 1 of a detachment does not know the difference between a drag rope and an ordinary piece of rope; when a battery tampers with the weapon served out to them by adding lifting irons to the guncarriage and limber; when they forget linch-pins; when they finish their work and leave pins unkeyed, drag-ropes, sponge-staff,and handspikes unstrapped; when they do their work in a bungling fashion, and then actually finish thirty seconds behw4 their opponents, who did their work thoroughly, &nd wasted half a minute in honestly trying to get an elevating eye-bolt into an eye that had been evidently bent in lowering the gun—we think the " examination " so bitterly eomplawed of by "Howitzer" was justified. We can only wonder that, in face of the things mentioned, the Dimedin men did npt lodge a protest. As to the complaint made about cavilling and fault-finding, we may say that, from what we know of the men composing the Dunedin detachment, they are not of the class to do either the one or the other. Both they and the Oamaru men had good grounds for complaining. Ifqw, in regard to the other matters. Our correspondent Sl Bombshell" has dealt pretty freely with the conduct of the Christchurch battery in. their contest with the Oamaru detachment, find ijb is not necessary that we should go into details. We will not burden our columns with a long list of sharp practices so successfully practised by the Christchurch detachment to gain a victory. Every device, including even the slumming of work, was brought into requisition, and simply by means of these acts, disgraceful to any body of Volunteers, the Christchurch men gained a victory. If the officers of the Christchurch Artillery do not know more tjian their men, they have still a

great deal to learn, and neither the Dunedin batteriesbave anything- to learn; from their Christchurch. brethren.