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Printed for the use of the Colonial Office. November 21, 1894.

CONFIDENTIAL.

96-R

QUEENSLAND.

QUEENSLAND.

No. 421.

Defence Scheme revised to March 1894.

Remarks by Colonial Defence Committee.

THE Colonial Defence Committee offer the following remarks on the Defence Scheme of Queensland as revised to March 1894.

1. The Scheme has, to a certain extent, been arranged in the form recommended in the Colonial Defence Committee's Memorandum No. 46, which has much increased its clearness, and, so far as it goes, seems well calculated to insure the most advantageous employment of the forces and resources available for the defence of the Colony.

It still, however, remains too much a mere outline of the measures to be adopted, and cannot be regarded as complete until the special arrangements connected with the defence of each port or coast town that is to be defended are worked out in greater detail, and recorded in a collective form for each particular port. The Committee invite attention to their observations on this head contained in their Remarks of August 1893, and suggest that the Scheme should be further developed as there recommended.

2. Covering Letter.-As the Governor has taken the necessary action to direct the attention of the Colonial Government to the constant failure of the Volunteers to maintain their numbers up to establishment, and to the urgency of rectifying the defects of certain guns at Lytton and Townsville, the Com- mittee have only to indorse his remarks on the importance of these points receiving proper attention.

In

3. The Governor raises the question of whether the large number of men who every year leave the Defence Force and the Volunteer Force may not be regarded as available to increase the Defence Force on emergency. his despatch of the 1st August, since received, he gives the number of the men who left the ranks between July 1891 and July 1894 as 4,944, including 1,354 Volunteers, the majority of these men having become fairly efficient before their discharge.

The Colonial Government have here, no doubt, the material for forming an effective Reserve Force, but apparently no record or registry of these men is kept, and unless this is done, and a hold obtained over them by means of a retaining fee, carrying the obligation of certain periodical drills, the Colonial Defence Committee cannot concur in regarding them as a real Reserve which could be relied on to appear when wanted, or which would be fit to take their place in the ranks on emergency.

In Victoria, men, who during a fixed number of previous years have taken their discharge, are registered, and receive a retaining fee of 31. per annum on con- dition of attending a small number of drills; also, in New South Wales a Reserve is in process of formation on somewhat similar lines, and it seems desirable that Queensland should take some steps in the same direction, and especially

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