FAT SOLDIERS.
Here is a story of the late American Commander General Shafter, who, although himself a man of corpulence, had a dislike for fat soldiers .
"They're no use!" he would bluster in his tremendous basso. "They pant, they wheeze, they snort, they choke, they gvunt, they groan, they waddle, they sloiffch through the world! Not a particle of good on earth, fat soldiers ! Would not have one of 'em if I could help it!"
'\ "Er—but—cr—you would not exactly call yourself slight, would you,*:colonel?" a major once asked Shafter after one of these outbursts
"Slight? No!" Shafter thundered in reply. "I've been a fat old nuisance ever since the day I tipped the beam at over two hundred pounds,' and then I ought to have been court-martialled and cashiered for outrageous and malicious adiposity, sir—for scandalous corpulence to the prejudice of military discipline."
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Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 17 February 1915, Page 7
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143FAT SOLDIERS. Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 17 February 1915, Page 7
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