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from among their own number. This provides for the Association being of the nature of a club with power to form its own rules as to rifle competitions and as to raising such funds as may be necessary, and as to any other object that may appear to them desirable, having in view the general idea of the Association. The fourth condition is that members should practise rifle shooting so as to become efficient shots, for which purpose they shall be lent rifles by the General Officer Commanding, and shall be supplied with ammunition at cost price. This relieves the Association from part of the ordinary charges of rifle clubs in return for the promise to enrol in time of emergency. The fifth condition refers to ranges-"The use of the Volunteer and Police range will be reserved for the Association one day in the week, and the members will have the right to use the range at all times when not otherwise occupied." Since that was published I have been in communication with the General Officer Commanding, and he is willing to make available to the Association the short rifle range that is to be provided for the military at High West, and also the military rifle range at Kowloon City. Further, I can promise the Association that so long as it is possible to use the King's Park rifle range at Kowloon with safety they will be permitted to do so. I should now like to justify my personal interest in the present scheme. From the end of the year 1895 till the end of the year 1900 it was my duty to examine the annual reports of the Commandant of the Hong Kong Volunteers, and these reports during those years showed a continuous progress both as regards numbers and of efficiency. At the end of the year 1895-96 the number of Volunteers was 125; at the 1896-97, 159; 1897-98, 176; 1898-99, 181; 1899-1900, 311. I am able, from my recollection of the reports of the other Volunteers and Militia in the British Colonies, to say that the state of the Hong Kong Volunteers compared very favourably with the state of the other 80,000 Militia and Volunteers forming the auxiliary forces of the other Colonies of the Empire. I was a little disappointed, therefore, when I arrived here to learn that the numbers had gone down to a little over 200, and also that there was a tendency on the part of the young men in Hong Kong to abandon Volunteering for other amusements; and I had to consider what steps should be taken to revive interest in the corps and to increase its numbers and efficiency. The experience gained during five years of dealing with reports from the colonial troops of the Empire made me believe that the best way for increasing the corps at Hong Kong was to have its various component parts under conditions which would take advantage of the special circumstances of the various classes of the population. This was a system that I followed with the Volunteers on the Gold Coast with some success. There I found that at the various coast stations there were only a few Europeans, not enough to make a company by themselves, and disinclined to join the native corps. So I instituted a machine gun section in each of the principal ports. At Accra, the capital, the machine gun section was mainly composed of officials under the command of an official. At Cape Coast Castle, the commercial centre, the Volunteers were mainly men in the business houses, and their Commanding Officer was the head of one of these houses; while at Axim the machine gun detachment was made up of men mainly engaged in mining, and of officials, and the Commanding Officer was an official. The various drills and parades were fitted in with the normal work of the different detachments, and on the whole these detachments took firm root; and I was informed by the Brigadier-General who inspected them early this year that they were a valuable addition to the defence of the Colony. Here, after carefully considering the matter, I put in hand three schemes. The first of these was to reorganize the existing Volunteers on the basis of detachments comprising men of the same department or the same firm with a view to these men always working together in peace drills and on active service and of combining with other detachments or relieving other detachments in time of war, each detachment being told off to its definite position in the scheme of defence. I believe there are some difficulties in carrying out that arrangement, but I think it has been on the whole favourably reviewed, and that there has been some increase in the Volunteers since it was put forward. The second project was the formation of the men who owned ponies, and who were in the habit of riding about the island, into a mounted troop. I was told that I could probably get twenty men to enrol themselves in such a troop. As a matter of fact, the troop which is now being enrolled consists of twenty-five members under Lieutenant the Honourable W. J. Gresson. The third project was that of a Volunteer reserve, to get hold of the men who no longer felt themselves disposed to go through the drudgery of ordinary drill, or who had gone through that drudgery already. I was told that I should probably get about 100 members. As a matter of fact, by the 15th September, the date mentioned in the original notification, only thirty-two members had enrolled. There was a fourth project, not entirely unconnected with the others, and that was to form a first-aid class for ladies who would subsequently go through nursing classes and then register their names for service in the naval and military hospitals in time of war. Sixty-six ladies have put their names
to it.
A few words now on the general question of Volunteering, and especially of Colonial Volunteering. At home, the ever-increasing burden of Imperial defence, which now absorbs 60 per cent. of the revenue derived from heavy taxation, the failure of various schemes of army reorganization to provide in the public opinion for the public needs in the matter of defence, and again, the failure to attract men to the army by various new inducements, have directed the minds of thinking men to the necessity of making more available the class from which the Volunteers in England now come, and the large class who have not yet recognized the obligation of preparing themselves for personal service for the defence of their country. In the Colonies this recognition of the obligation to prepare for personal service has always been more widespread than at home, and especially is that the case in Colonies where there is only a small proportion of British residents living in the midst of a large number of fellow subjects of an alien race. Personally, I have long been of opinion
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