The Dominion. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1942. THE STATE AND PHYSICAL TRAINING

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 32, 2 November 1942, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1942. THE STATE AND PHYSICAL TRAINING

The Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr. Parry, has been defending the aims and the operation of the Physical Welfare and Recreation Act against the criticism from certain church bodies that these would result in a system of regimentation on the lines of youth movements in Germany and Italy. “Nothing,” says the Minister, could be further from the truth.” Similar soothing assurances, have been voiced by members of the Socialist Government from time to time to disarm well-grounded apprehensions concerning, for example., the ultimate effects of legislation restricting free enterprise in business and industry. The point is that legislation of this, kind, whethei for the control of business, industry, or physical training, create the means to an end—the entire regimentation of the nation under bureaucratic control. Ministerial denials notwithstanding, there is the fact. Mr. Parry stresses the point that' the sole object of the Physical Training and Recreation Act is to encourage various means of promoting the health of the nation. But there is a difference between encouragement' and control. For example, there is no need for an Act of Parliament with its accompanying regulations to enable tlie Government to grant financial assistance from the public funds to sports bodies and physical culture organizations of one kind and anothei bv wav of encouragement. Previous Governments nave done this, and in doing so, have placed the beneficiaries under no obligation to surrender their complete' freedom of action. This freedom of action is one of the principles involved in the criticism that is now being raised against State control of physical training and recreation. Youth should be allowed to pursue its natural inclinations toward sport and recreation in its own way, and, in organizing these things, to control its various institutions as it thinks fit. . , , The Minister refers to the working of the card system in schools as a method, for which he claims successful results, of guiding youth to specially selected forms of sport. But does this country real y want its youth card-indexed? What business is it of the State whether a youth plays cricket, football, tennis, or ping-pong. It may easily be imagined that the youth of a country brought up in this way might eventually assume the pattern of the State-regimented youth of Germany and Italy, a pattern from which individual characteristics have been systematically eliminated. In the same way the adult members of the community may become so systematically controlled and regimented that to all intents and purposes they will be merely puppets of the State in a vast bureaucracy. OMr aim and purpose in this country should be, as has been repeatedly emp lasized in recent writings on the subject of the new order after the war to preserve individual characteristics, individual freedom, and individual initiative. Only by preserving these things, and fostering them, shall we be a free country.