128 GOOD HEALTH 



Then he took pains to notice which soldiers were the 

 healthier, and which made the better fighters, those 

 who drank or those who did not drink. 



He heard that in a certain regiment there were four 

 hundred men who did not take alcohol, and at once he 

 began to keep a record of those men and of the other 

 men in the same regiment. He discovered that the 

 men who did not drink could march farther without 

 getting tired, fight harder without running away, and 

 live longer without getting ill. After that he always said 

 that warm countries "are precisely the climates where 

 alcohol is most harmful." Since then many other men 

 all over the world have said the same thing. 



Sir Charles Napier gave an address to a company of 

 soldiers in India, and he said: " Let me give you a bit 

 of advice. Don't drink. You are come to a country 

 where, if you drink, you are dead men. If you be sober 

 and steady, you '11 get on well ; but if you drink you 're 

 done for. I knew two regiments in this country: one 

 drank, the other did n't drink. The one that did n't drink 

 is one of the finest regiments and has got on as well as 

 any regiment in existence. The one that did drink has 

 been all but destroyed." 



When soldiers are ill in India they have to go to the 

 soldiers' hospital, and it is easy to find out there which 

 kind of men get sick the more easily, those who drink 

 or those who do not drink. 



