RIFLE CLUBS.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 September 1920, Page 5

RIFLE CLUBS.

FUTURE DEFENCE POLICY. (By Wire.—Parliamentary Reporter.) Wellington, Last Night. The long and honorable association of rifle club members with the defence forces was the reason given by Mr. W. T. Jennings (Waitomo) for asking if the Minister for Defence approved of the new policy indicated in the* defence report. The military authorities, said Mr. Jennings, were proposing to separate the rifle clubs front the Defence Department. M.ost of the members of those clubs were old members of the volunteer and territorial forces. They were trained men, and he would like the Minister to remember that in Auckland city, for example, Mr. James Parslow and Mr. A. Henderson, who had shot with Mr. Jennings himself twenty years ago, were now scoring I'OO out of a possible 105 points at rifle association meetings. 'The dissociation of the rifle dubs from the defence forces would not be in the interests of the clubs or of rifle shooting. Sir R. Heaton Rhodes replied that he had already told the representatives of the Rifle Associations that he would confer with them before any change was made.