The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1918-12-11
A FAC 100000 MILES LONG,

From It'd Bits, London: An al
loWance Of more than one hundred
cigarets for every man, woman and
child in Great Britain today; nearly
300 for every man or boy in the Uni
ted Kingdom above Is years old, or
three for every person on the earth
Such is the meaning OF the bald
official statement that 4,400 million
cigarets are supplied to the army in
one year.
Such a colossal figure conveys
little to the unaided mind. It is only
when we juggle with 1t and fashion
from it a few mental pictures that
we realize something Of its stipend
GUS significance.
Let us, in fancy, take these thou
sands of millions of flags" and
place them end to end.--thirteen to a
yard. We shall then find that we
have cigaret almost long enough
TO girdle the earth eight times at the
equator. So long is it that, travelling
at so miles an hour night and day,
1t would take a train more than ~
weeks to travel from end to end Of it.
Enough For $3.50 Years.
To smoke all these cigarets at the
rate of six an hour would leave no
breathing space in 1890 years. Or, TO
put it in another way, If 43 men,
endowed with sufficient length OF
day, had begun the task at the be-
ginning of the Christian era, they
would today be smoking Industrious
ly, with millions OF cigarets still to
be smoked.
Let us now take our mountain of
cigarets and fashion them into one
gigantic fag'-"Tommy's" monu-
ment to my Lady Nicotine" So
imposing will it be that If we raise
1t on end it will rise as high as the
London Monument a shade more
than 200 feet.
1t will have a diameter OF 20 feet
and O. circumference so large that
ten OF the tallest men in the army
would have difficulty in circling it
with out stretched finger tips.
If we climb to its summit we shall
find ourselves on q circular platform
so large that it would afford stand
ing room for two companies of SOL
diers. So spacious is its paper
ground as a tunnel there would be
room for two trains to race through
its center side by side.
If we now place our leViathan
'"fag' in one pan Of a colossal pair
of scales and a second class cruiser
in the other, we shall see the war
ship rise helplessly in the air. So
heavy. indeed, Is it that it would
outweigh the entire population OF
Halifax and tax the strength of
three thousand powerful horses to
draw it through the streets OF Lon
don. .--
If now we split it up into its COM
ponent millions for transport by rail
we shall require train of 500 trucks,
each carrying nearly ten tons. A
score of powerful engines will be
necessary to draw our train, the
length Of which will be two miles.
For transport by road we shall re-
quire 1000 carts drawn by as many
strong horses. Or we may employ
100000 soldiers. giving to each a
burden of nearly a hundred weight
To purchase these cigarets at
civilian prices we should have to
write a check for about so million
dollars. Or, if we could settle our
bill in gold, we should require
roughly ~ tons of soverigns-a suf-
ficient weight for thousand sturdy
soldiers to carry.
And these, we must remember, are
"Tommy's" official" cigarets alone.
How many more thousands of mil
lions he smokes yearly who shall
say. The official number, Stupendous
as 1t is. would have to be multiplied
by three or four.