The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-08-02 00:00:00

Ci!e ,itourbribge (011$erint,

SATURDAY. AUGUST 2nd, 1884.

THE VOLUNTEER FORCE.
Tim Wimbledon rifle competition has once
more come to a close with the distribution
of prizes, a list which every year increases
in length and in value. The camp tents are

itrucli-, and the rain beats upon the common
without patting our citizen soldiers to the
inconvenience of wading through s. quag-
mire in order to get a shot at the targets.
The hundreds of riflemen who had gathered
upon that well-known Surrey plain have re-
turned to their respective homes, to think
and talk over the incidents of a meeting
which annually augments in interest and
importance. The usual honours have been
been paid to the Queen's prizeman, who was
so closely pressed by a volunteer from the
north of the Tweed. The teams representing
England and Ireland, Scotland and Canada,
have gone their several ways, leaving
Wimbledon Common to the normal calm

and qaietade which so eminently befit so
genteel a snbarb c.f London._

The excellent accomplishments of our
volunteer riflemen command a considerable
share of public attention. For instance,
there are fe w households in which the win-
ner of the Queen's Prize is nut talked about,
and the illustrated newspapers hasten to
gratify their readers with a portrait of the
fortunate man who has won the 'badge and
gold medal of the National Rifle Association.
to say nothing of the £250 which always
accompanies these honours. The publica-
tion of the long scores in the daily news-
papers accounts in a great degree for the at-
tention with which the competitions are
followed. So much notice is bestowed upon
the riflemen, that other important ' arms of
toe volunteer service are sometimes liable
to be lost sight of, at all events temporarily.
For example, there is the engineer corps
which carries out such useful operations
every year at Chatham, but whose doings
for obvious reasons cannot be followed so
closely by the general public as those of the
riflemen. The practice of the latter can be
seen and watched, criticised, and admired;
but it is only a comparatively few of the
body politic who can follow the records of
the sappers and miners, and can compre-
hend the mysteries of fascines and gabions,
scarps and cou.ntc-r-s.,arps. Yet how im-
portant is the profession of an engineer in a
fighting army was strikingly illustrated
when the allied armies, instead of marching
upon Sebastopol immediately after the
Battle of the Alma,.and carrying it by as-
sault, determined upon an investment.
Sebastopol was practically an open town on
the land side however formidable it might
have been on its sea front. A young officer
in the Russian engineers, Todleben by name,
threw up earthwork defences round about
Sebastopol with such success that he held
the allied armies at bay for eleven months,
and the place had to be slowly taken by the
agency of parallels and trenches. Todleben
lived to be a General and Governor of
Odessa. The opportunity of creating a
fortress out of an open city was one to be
seized. The hour had come—and the man
and General Todleben made a name for him-
self which will ever live in Russian history.
There is another branch of the volunteer
service which does not come underthe public
eyes so much as the deeds of the riflemen.
That is the National. Artillery. This always
holds its annual competition at Shoeburyness
early in August. This possesses far less at-
tractions than the shooting At Wimbledon.
In the first place it is not so accessible. and
even if it were the visitor would find the
work very uninteresting in its nature. Yet
it is seen at a glance how important it is
that the national Artillery Volunteers should
be quite as skilled as marksmen as their
brethercn the riflemen. Indeed it is of
even greater importance. It is obvious that
in case of an invasion—a contingency which
seemed nearer when the force was formed
than it does now—the Artillery Volunteers
would form our first line of defence. Let us
imagine an invading sqnadron having run
the gauntlet of the Channel Fleet and eluded
its vigilance. It would be essential that the
guns of the artillery on the shore should
deal effectively with the advancing armada,
and that every shot should tell. It would
not be until the artillery were defeated that
the time of the rifles should come. The
great importance of the Shoeburyness prize
meeting is therefore obvious to all. The
artillery, no less than the rifles and the
engineers, deserve and have the grateful
thanks of all who know and appreciate the
value of time in this money-getting age, and
can therefore estimate the sacrifices which
the volunteers cheerfully make in the service
of their country.

FAIR WRITE ILLNDS.