The Southern Cross PUBLISHED WEEKLY. Invercargill.Saturday, June 17.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 12, 17 June 1893, Page 8

The Southern Cross PUBLISHED WEEKLY. Invercargill.Saturday, June 17.

As a rule the toast of “ The Army, Navy, and Volunteers ” calls forth a reply of a stereotyped order, but Mr Robert McNab, wlao commands the G. Battery, and who was invited to respond to the toast in question at the Fortrose banquet on Monday night, went out of the ordinary groove, and spoke to some purpose as to a few of the disabilities under which the volunteers of the colony labour. In the course of his remarks he referred to the complaint sometimes urged against the volunteers on the score of lax discipline, and remarked that hitherto Governments had erred in their treatment of volunteers. Officers holding high positions in the Imperial Army had been put over the colonial forces, and when such gentlemen came to New Zealand, where each man considered himself a unit in the State, they treated the volunteers as they would so many privates in the Imperial Army. There was, Mr McNab continued, no comparison between the respective conditions of things. Colonial volunteers would not stand that sort of treatment, and were soon completely out of touch with officers of that stamp; and unless the Government obtained a man who had not been shut up all his life from the mass of the people they would never secure the reformation of the. forces. One-half of the existing evils were traceable to the fact that the men in command did not know the nature of the material over which they had been placed. There is no doubt Mr McNab went straight to the root of the matter, and he is to be complimented on the clear and incisive manner in which he spoke his mind. The officers selected at Home m ay be, and doubtless are, all that could be wished for from a military point of view, but it does not therefore follow that they are the best men for the position. An efficient volunteer force is an admirable feature in any country, particularly in a colony like this. It affords our youth a fine opportunity of acquiring habits of discipline that will stand them in good stead in the battle of life—tends to make them manly and robust; and Mr McNab has done g-ood service in publicly calling attention to what he regards as a weak spot in the system, so far as the central control is concerned.