Swimming across the English Channel.

Gisborne Times, Volume VIII, Issue 519, 16 September 1902, Page 3

Swimming across the English Channel.

Another man has been fished out of th English Channel in a half dazed condition, the result of an unsuccessful endeavor to swim across. lie would have nobody to blame had he been left in. A man who can swim from England to France, and does it in these days of cheap and comfortable steamer transit, is quite enough of a fool, but the fellow who can't, and risks his life in trying, is a nuisance ns well as an ass. Why should people be put to the trouble of saving such people from the efleots of their own selfish folly? Supposing a man without any aid, succoed in swimming the English Channel, or the Aflantio Ocean, who would be benefited? No one. He would be able to swagger round for the rest of his life as tho ohampion long-distance swimmer, and thus gratify an empty personal vanity, but society would not be one bit the hotter for hi 3 feat.

It would do nothing towards teaching other people to swim over great stretches of water and if the power of going from England to France in that way could be acquired by the average man, it would not be worth the trouble Julius Cicsar boasted of having gone over in a galley “ without waiting for a fair wind,” which was probably a lie, and in his day the ability to swim across might have boon worth something. Rut the man who last tried it took 23 hours, and then did not net thero, while a late cable reports that a turbine boat has just been built to make the passage, irrespective of wind or weather, in 45 minutes. Swimming the Channel under theae cireumstanoes is a manifest absurdity,

and encouraging people to make the attempt bv gifts of money is, if possible, still more foolish. If anyone lost his life as the result of such encouragement, all his aiders and abettorß ought to be up for manslaughter. As for tho man who spends 23 hours in the renter trving to swim the Channel for nobody’s benefit, if be were as bod to put in ten minutes’ wood-chopping he would probably refuse with indignation. It is a mad world which panders to such men.