ration of war against South Africa.

I had determined therefore that on my return to Australia I would set
myself the task of establishing an Australian arsenal and an explosive
factory.

The advent of the Boer War and afterwards the inauguration of the
Commonwealth of Australia necessarily postponed any practical action.
However, on taking up my duties as Commandant of Victoria under the
Commonwealth Government, I commenced to school public opinion in favour
of becoming self-supporting in a matter so intimately and seriously
affecting the material interests and welfare of its people. As regarded
the arsenal, Australia possessed every ingredient required for the
manufacture of every nature of gun, from a 9.2 to a maxim, from .303
rifle and bayonet to a service revolver. Coal, iron ore, copper, wood,
tin, zinc were there in plenty.

Railway engines, agricultural implements, mining machinery were all being
manufactured locally. Why not guns, mountings, rifles, and so on?
Practically similar conditions applied to explosives.

The change from the Martini-Henry to the .303 Lee-Metford, and later on
from the long to the short Lee-Metford, left Australia in a sad plight.
It was some years before the Home Government were able to supply the
orders sent from Australia. All through that time the local forces and
rifle club members suffered from inability to obtain up-to-date rifles.
As a few thousands of the new rifles arrived they were issued to the
partially-paid force, and their discarded ones were passed on to the
volunteers, and finally, when actually worn out, to the members of the
rifle clubs, who mostly hung them up as trophies of a past era over their
mantle-pieces at their homes, and bought up-to-date match rifles at their
own expense.

The situation was becoming grave; discontent was rife; interest in rifle
shooting was waning fast. The time had come for a determined effort to
force the Government to take action.

One of many curious facts which it is difficult to account for is the
apathy which often takes hold of a Government when a plain businesslike
proposition is put before them. My long experience in dealing with
Colonial Governments had taught me that the surest way of achieving one's
object was to take into one's confidence the leaders of the Opposition
for the time being, convince them of the soundness and merits of the
proposal, and induce them to adopt the scheme as a plank of their own
policy. Those i