An ex-sergeant has made some calculations to impress on the minds of his friends the immensity of the loss of life in the Great War. The official list of British dead, taking the Empire, was nearly a million. Marching in fours at intervals of a yard, these dead soldiers would form a column over 120 miles long, or from Paddington to beyond Bristol. Marching past in fours at the rate of four miles an hour they would take over 30 hours to pass a given point. If 100 of their bodies had been placid in a railway truck, and 40 trucks made into a trainload, it would have required about 230 trains to carry them away. This is the cost of war to one of the fighting nations, and 18 nations were deep in it.
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Otago Witness, Issue 3542, 31 January 1922, Page 41
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135Untitled Otago Witness, Issue 3542, 31 January 1922, Page 41
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