A Recruiting Committee Below will be found further eztracts from old Volunteer records which, as has been previously announced, have been kindly placed at our disposal by a former member of the Light Horse.
An important part of the records refers to a matter of grave importance to the Volunteers of the day, in fact to the whole community, coming as it did at the time when the British troops had been ordered to evacua: Shanghai. As will be seen from the extracts published below, enthusiasm for the Volunteers "had fallen off, and after an_unsuccessful attempt, by a recruiting committee to bring the strength of the Corps up to reasonable proportions, liquidation had to be resolved upon, at a time when a claim for Tls. 11,000 was out-
An undated copart is found as to the state of affairs in the Corps generally. It is apparently of the year 1864, and in the records afore us is the first indication that all was not well. It states that proficiency in drill is far from satisfactory, recommends the creation of a volunteer club, and considers that in the different ports in China and Japan, volunteers from other ports might be enrolled as "casual" members and be allowed—the privilege of falling in and drilling with companies and battalions assembled for exercises. It considered that the charges for the use of the Rhenish Band were too heavy for the Corps to meet, and recommends the creation of a purely volunteer band, say, of drums and fifes. Its suggestion for a future establishment 1s as follows:—
Cavalry, 1 Troop Men, Artillery, 1 battery or company 5 Engineers, skeleton company 25 Rifles, 4 companies 300 lal Recrvirine Camparen.
The belief that this report is of the year 1864 is supported by another report of the same year which seems to follow it in chronological order. Dated December 19, 1864, it is a private report drawn' up by the S.V.C. Recruit ing Committee and addressed to Mr. R. C._Antrobus, commanding officer. It is as follow:
Sir, In accordance with the resolution passed at the meeting of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps on the 9th ult. by which we were appointed to act as a recruiting committee, we have now the honour to submit' the following report of our proceedings Having carefully gone through the muster roll with a view of arriving at the then effective strength of the Corps, we found that we could only count on 72 members as likely to attend parades re-turn out good
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.