THE SOLDIER’S LIFE PRESERVER.

One of the most efficient weapons of the British soldier is his belt. It is a heavy leather strap, armed with a massive buckle, and, when wielded by the strong arm of a grenadier, will cut an enemy’s head open, and inflict upon him other dreadful injuries. Its efficiency is most remarkable in a mélée, wherein it enables a powerful man to prostrate surrounding adversaries right and left, mutilating and maiming them with the severest lacerated wounds. At the Middlesex Sessions, the other day, two privates in the Guards, George Hales and Charles Humphreys, were convicted of demonstrating the effects of these weapons on the persons of certain policemen and others, and have, consequently, obtained twelve months’ release from military duty and the same period of employment in hard labour. The gallant fellows mistook surrounding circumstances for those of the field of battle, or the storming of a town, whilst in a state of intoxication. Had they happened to be wearing their bayonets, they would no doubt have used them instead of their belts, and it would have been as well if they had, because a bayonet inflicts a wound much less nasty than a strap and a brass buckle, and is of the two the preferable instrument of offence for a soldier to exercise on his fellow citizens. If, therefore, the belts are to be worn any longer by our private heroes about the streets, the bayonets likewise had better be added; because the belt without the bayonet looks absurd: whereas, in the hands of a drunken ruffian, it is equally formidable.

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