THE MILITARY JOURNAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10, 9 May 1912, Page 7

THE MILITARY JOURNAL.

INTERESTING SECOND NUMBER. Number two of the Military Journal, which hah just been issued, is particularly interesting. Captain H. Eyre Kenny continues his reminiscences of the old lighting days in New Zealand. Re is certainly a veteran. Tic has repeatedly seen the men of the 2nd Black Watch dialling with the flint firelock, and was himself first drilled with the percussion musket, and has many times fired ball cartridges at a target with that weapon'. In these days when even New Zealand has its flying machines and modern Howitzers, it seems strange to have still in our midst one who remembers the days when an entry might have been made in a soldier s company crime sbeot for “Not having his flint squarely fixed.” Captain Kenny gives some interesting facts about the old percussion musket and the Hint firelock. Captain Kenny’s present article firings his reminiscences down to the time of the fighting at Wanganui. A very useful article is an explanation by Colonel Heard, of the Imperial General Staff, of the form in which a paper on tactics is set. The maps accompanying the article make it especially valuable, as New Zealand is rather deficient in military maps and in competent map-readers. The Rev. J. H. Dove, headmaster of the Wanganui Collegiate School, writes on the subject of Senior Cadet Training ; Captain Archibald on Army Officers ; Captain Grace upon Napoleon’s Campaign of 1813; and Captain Thornton on the organisation of the New Zealand military forces. Finally, there are a couple of articles that will interest the general reader as well as the mere military man. One is by Captain F. Hudson, of the New Zealand Staff Corps, and is entitled “Soldiers and I Sybarites—a Rhetorical March at Ease.” It is •written in a -charmingly humorous style, and has a literary flavour that would adorn the pages of a more pretentious magazine. The other article is a recruit’s impressions of the first Territorial' camp, by Noel Ross, N.Z. F.A. It is written in the right spirit by one who has evidently gone through the mill and who recognises the benefits that will accrue to the nation-and the individual as the result of 'our present,system of compulsory military training. The article, which is written in a pleasantly humorous vein, shows very clearly that the recruit)* 1 took to the work cheerfully and were not the “unhappy conscripts” the afttfi'-militar-, ists would have us believe thorn. Altogether, the present issue : of the journal is an interesting an instructive publication that does credit to its editor and its contributors.