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Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 968, 7 May 1872, Page 2

A telegram in our last issue notified that the Christchurch and Lyttelton volunteers were being officially inspected, and contained the stereotyped phrase " firing good." How far the periodical inspection of our, socalled, gallant defenders serves any practical purpose, other than to increase the expenditure in sham display of a goodly portion of the annual vote for volunteer purposes, is open to serious question. It may be eminently satisfactory to learn that Lieutenant Colonel Harrington is zealously .attending to his duties, and that, following in his wake, a number of lesser official luminaries now and then bestir themselves to prove how impossible it would be for the New Zealand taxpayers to dispense with their services. It may be pleasing also to know that the folks at Christchurch, and other favored localities, are enabled to enjoy witnessing, at public expense, all the pomp and circumstance of mimic war, heightened even by the sensational episode of the lives of spectators being endangered by the blowing up of a formidable Armstrong gun. Inspections and reviews are doubtless essentially necessary ; but, all things considered, the conviction will assert itself that the colony gets no fair equivalent for the present liberal expenditure on the volunteer force. The fact was fully confirmed at the Colonial Rifle gathering in Canterbury that money alone will not make good volunteer soldiers. The mere selection of some three score marksmen from the various volunteer companies scattered throughout the colony; to compete in prize firing, even supposing that each man selected had proved himself a fair average marksman, by no means also proved tha&his companious at home are similarly proficient. In fact to those who know aught of the morale of the volunteer force, it has long been patent that the system, initiated under most cheering auspices, is rapidly degenerating into a palpable sham, an organisation for the encouragement of inefficient men aud useless officers. It is notorious that the force is not worth a fraction of the money it annually costs the country; that the number of nonefficients, who take no trouble to become proficient in the use of the rifle, and treat all idea of drill with contempt, is greatly in excess of the number of average shots ; and that the credit of the force has been long maintained by the public display of the abilities of a comparative few enthusiasts in the cause, men to whom the crack of the rifle ia as music to the ear, and who practice rather as a pastime than as a duty incumbent on good and loyal subjects of the Queen. Nor will the country obtain a thoroughly efficient force at any price, until the present system is remodelled, and payments by average results in entire companies strictly enforced—each individual member being compelled to exert himself to become fairly proficient. The illustrious scions of the Barnacle family, who affect the volunteer force, will also have to be taught the needful lesson that the finances of the colony can no longer support a host of exclusively ornamental attaches. The sooner the multitude of " superior officers" now figuring on the roll of volunteers is diminished and the pruning knife judiciously applied to other expensive excresences, the better for the force and the country.