The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1917-07-19

| 0Ou, hOuOi thC 4uCOh, ShOSe
straight and keep clean"
This was the creed the immortal
Mulvaney taught to the young re-
cruits when they joined THE Old
Regiment" out in India. If you will
substitute for queen" the flag Of your
ow:l ideal If what you are fighting
for, you will have a perfect soldiers
creed of your OWL. For the ruler OF
Great Britain and Ireland, the toast
of every British army mess, is merely
the symbol of nationalism. 1t is not
the individual ruler, but what the
throne stands for; just as the flag
stands for nationalism with us.
AS to fearing God, every normal
man has his own reactions in those
matters, and most of us have no con-
fidants. Shooting straight is the
third count in the creed, and fully as
| important as the others. 1t will be
taken up in detail in later chapters.
| The Importance of keeping clean.
Mulvancy made the last command of
the series. He gave it the place that
orators give their most telling point
! Every soldier will understand why
he did it. A soldier has no more i'm
! portant duty than keeping clean. He
| will find himself unable to discharge
Init hn l..
one.
The Importance OF cleanliness and
, how to go about achieving it under
all but plainly impossible conditions
will also be taken up in detail later
In this chapter | am going to tell the
selected man how to prepare himself
and his luggage for the call to the
mobilization camp.
There are two kinds of physical
cleanliness-cleanlin of muscle
and cleanliness of skin. The first
you get by exercise and the second
by soap and water. A good soldier
is clean both ways. A recruit is
! pretty sure, especially the recruits
for the national army, to be clean
| in the soap-and-water way when he
joins the army. There is no reason
| why he should not be muscularly
clean, and there is no reason why he
should not keep himself soap-and-
water clean when he goes to camp
The settins-Up Drill.
Muscular cleanness the selected
men can get to great degree by
what is known in the army as set
ting-up-drill." At your school it was
probably called calisthenics. Any
time you go to public school you
are likely to see lot of little chill
dren going through those exercises,
but don't get the impression that
there is anything childish about the
setting-up drill. If you come to it
with soft muscles you will regret it.
l know of one young man about
six foot in his stockings and of
wiry, sinewy build, who joined a
training corps to prepare himself for
the officers reserve. He has been
working with his head and not with
his hands for a number Of years, and,
while he was not fat, his muscles
were out Of condition.
The instructor was young man
who had taught athletics at West
Point, and the first night this rookie !
joined the corps there was about !;
twenty minutes of stiff setting-up
drill. The next day he could hardly |
move. He had taken the idea of set |
ting-up lightly. 1t would be good
thing for him, he thought-a little
light exercise two or three times
week
When he found he could barely
hoist himself out of bed the next
morning he revised his ideas about
the lightness of setting-up drill He
discovered sore muscles in places
Where ne didn't think there were
any muscles at all. But he knew
there was only one thing to do
keep at it. Groaning painfully. he
forced himself through about five
minutes of it the next morning and
about ten minutes that evening. He
kept it up, morning and evening. In
a few days the soreness was gone.
He went through his second drill un.
der the instructor without much dis.
comfort the following day, and in a,
few weeks he found himself able to
do stunts" with his body that he
had not been able to do since he was
a school boy
The point of this little story is
that the army setting-up drill is no
Joke. 1t is stiff exercise for a man
who is not in good hard condition.
and the thing for you to do is to be
in as good hard condition as YOU pos.
sibly can when you join the army.
Than tho Satt;--,,- sa-:r, |