SKATES IN WAR

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 22, 26 January 1924, Page 16

SKATES IN WAR

HEALTHY, THOUGH DANGER-

OUS, EXERCISE,

On the Continent skates have proved their use in war-time, both for actual fighting—as when a Dutch army on skates thrust the French back across the Scheldt—and as a means of rapid communication. After the Battle of Jena, states a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian," Napoleon sent an urgent dispatch to Marshal Mortier directing him to seize the Hanseatic towns. The officer charged with" this dispatch found himself near the mouth of the Elbe, at.a point where H .was seven and a half miles from bank to bank. The river was coated with newlyirozen ice, so there was no crossing by boat,, while to travel by way of ° the nearest bridge would have necessitated \ <£ v' of Uventv miles- To save time the officer determined to skato across and though the ice was too thin to bear a man walking he skimmed along at such a pace that he reached the.opposite bank 'safely. During the great frost of 1860 three companies of Lincolnshire volunteers assembled on the Witham, below the Stamp End Lock, carrying their packs and rifles. After going through various evolutions they formed fours and skated down the river to Boston, keeping step as perfectly as if on land. Yet less than'half a century earlier we find a London paper describing skating as dangerous and those who indulged In it as. heroes. "The Observer" of 29th December, 1818, reports that "almost every sheet of water in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis is covered with ice On Saturday the healthy and graceful, although dangerous, exercise of skatinobecame very general. The Serpentine River in Hyde Park,' the canals in St. James's and the" Green Parks, Rosamond's Pond, and every other suitable place have been attended by; steel-shod heroes. .. . Crowds collected on terra firma to watch the motley groups, and amongst those we noticed several persons of the highest respectability." ' v