The experience I had gained while I held the appointment of Military Adviser to the Australian Colonies, 1897-99, had taught me how impossible it would be in time of war, or even in anticipation of a war, to obtain supplies of warlike stores for Australia, not only from the Continent of Europe (whence at that time even the Home Government had to import many essential requirements, such as searchlights), but from England itself. No further example of this need be quoted than the one given by me with reference to the scarcity of small-arm ammunition at the time of the declaration 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.