OUR SINEWS OF WAR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 635, 19 June 1874, Page 3

OUR SINEWS OF WAR.

—o ,■ •, V- > f ■ In an article cn “ Our Sinews of War,” Land and Water remarks It it quite clear that the Ist sad 2nd Life Guards, the Royal Iloise Guards, and the Ist Dragoon Gut.ds must contain by far thr finest specimens of the British soldier., The Life Guards measure nearly 37 inches round the ehestj when still three months under twenty year* of age, and the remaining three regiments fall very little short of the Jsame standard- Some authorities go in for the theory that the lightest possible soldier oh the strongest possible horse is the sound cna; others insist that riders of great size and weight— the heavy brigades in shrit—are the only useful cavalry arm. Sudi seems, indeed, to be the view of our War Office, for, to judge by the chest measurement of our cavalry recruits, in every regiment of light troopeie, leally such, we have none. It is a pity also that we have no paiticulars as to the average height of the footealdier. Great stature is, nowadays, since the introduction of such far carrying weapons, of less importance than was, perhaps, the case in former times ; but in ad litlan to this the tallest men, as is well known, are neither the strongest nor the mest enduring. Weight we will allow to be of ihe utmost importance, but as to stature, can any better informed authoiity tell us whether it was true that the Foot Guards returned to England frem the Crimea shorter on the average than wheja they went out, and that because all the tail man died in consequence of the privation, the exposure, the wmt.r ligonrs, and the damp. This, we have besn assured, is true. Of the men who went out to Turkey when the Guards left home tor the Eastjonly the medium sized men lived to come back to their homes. One word more, and we have done. Wherever the constitution is severely tried by extreme bad weather, hard work and exposure, the smokers will hold out much longer than the men who neither smoko nor make use of tobacco in any other way. So, may the? soldiers of England never have their pipes put cut.