WHY MARCHING IS HARD WORK.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXVI, Issue 4469, 8 September 1911, Page 4 (Supplement)

WHY MARCHING IS HARD WORK.

People are apt to think soldiers yery poor walkers because an army on the march covers only ten or twelves miles of ground per day. Even then a good many/ men fall out through fatigue, some faint, and the whole are completely done up at the end of the day. But the soldier is, nevertheless, a first-rate walker. It is all a matter of foot-tons of energy expended. Take an ordinary labourer, and his, day’s work will 'bo equal to three hundred tons lifted one foot high. - An eleven-stone man,:: walking seventeen miles on the level, does the same amount of muscle work.;’. But mark, if ho carries an overcoat weighing six pounds, .'he does 311 foot-tons. Now the soldier is. a regular pack-horse, and the kit that he carries averages about 60 lb. in weight. So that he does exactly as much work in a twelve miles march as an ordinary man in his seventeen-mile walk. Besides, the soldier has to “ break camp ” before starting, and at the finish of the march he has to pitch camp, draw water, collect fuel, clean rides, etc., not to speak of talcing sen try-go. When, as sometimes happens, an army marches twenty miles, the day’s work of the soldier is really two days’ - work, or about 600 foot-tons.

Tinder the protection of a large band of police, a rate-collector has at last set out for the middle islands of Aran, County Galway, from whoso inhabitants arc duo five .years’ rents.

Lulu was watching her mother working among tho flowers. “ Mamma, I know why flowers grow,” sho said: “ they want to got out of the dirt.”

First Cat: “ How sweetly you sing? I never heard anything so entrancing! What .was that last song?” Second Cat (sentimentally): _ “If T had nine thousand lives to live, I’d live them all for you I ”

" How vices Slithers feel about that chauffeur who ran off with his car and his daughter? ” asked Wilkes. “ He’s very grateful,” said Bildad. “ lie snys tho poor fellow relieved him’ of his twe most expensive possessions.”

Guest at a Restaurant: " Excuse me, sir, can you let me come to tho telephone? You have been there twenty minutes without saying a word.” “ Sorry, sir, hut I’m talking to my wife.”

“ Won’t you plcaso give mo an order P ” pleaded the persistent traveller “

" Certainly! ” replied the crusty proprietor. “ Get out! ”