THE BANDS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 46, 16 August 1911, Page 4

THE BANDS.

In times "Jang syne" the regimental band played tin; rank and file into action and (it is suggested) helped thorn to win the fight. Nowadays matters military are arranged with due regard to military mathematics and not to military sentiment. Lord Kitchener is hardly a sentimentalist. It is possible that he docs not know a note of music. He is a mathematician. He reasons deliberately that such and such a tactic under such and such conditions, at such and such a time, will effect a given result. So that neither he. nor Colonel Kilpatrick. his splendid stall' officer, thought about the financial upkeep of military hands when they laid down the military foundation for the soldierly structure wo flatter ourselves we are rearing. Tt appears that military bands in New Zealand may exist if they like and disappear if they want to. They are entitled, should they remain in the service, to draw the money requisite for the purchase of their uniforms, but nothing more. We are sorry that General Godloy, who may or may not be a mathematician purely and simply, has not, in his warm and manly way, jumped for the bandmasters and said, as he has said to everyone else, "Come and help us—we want you!" It will be a disaster to lose our garrison or-battalion bands, for they help more than all else to popularise

soldiering. The commandant knows the sentiment that has helped Dan Godfrey's Band to its place in the British Army? He has perhaps heard of the Artillery Band? Indeed, he lias sat at mess, listening to the fine music of the finest regimental bands in the service. lie must not let our very capable military bands disappear. He will, of course, when iie has time, give the members of bands even a better "hearing" than the Territorial "Tommy"; he must institute new bands, because they nre a necessity to | recruiting, and he will probably yet conclude that mounted bands —the last of which disappeared, as far as New Zealand is concerned, .10 years ago —are an excellent method of stirring marti.il ardor. It is not suggested that existing military bands should approach the authorities; for the military authorities hate being approached, believing that they have the whole sum of human wisdom stowed away under a nine by three forage cap. The only hope that the authorities—which, one supposes, include the totally unemotional AdjutantGeneral and his absolutely quiverless staff—will keep the bands, is that the wives of the gentlemen of the sfaff corps will plead witii their grim soldier husbands to let the bands live. How grim a soldier is in the presence of his O.C. tie drawing-room—ask Lord Roberts!