DECLINING STAMINA

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20047, 20 September 1939, Page 14

DECLINING STAMINA

YOUNG SOUTH AFRICANS INSUFFICIENT MILK JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 8. “I am getting rather tired of elderly gentlemen at conferences talking academically about malnutrition. Let us call it by its proper name—starvation. And let us face the question: the staple foods are being produced in the country, but young South Africa is not getting them.” Mr. T. A. BlakeleV, retiring president of the Natal Teachers’ Society, made this blunt statement during his adress at the annual conference in Maritzburg. ‘Tn the last quarter of a century, the stamina of our school-children has declined,” he said. “England's has improved. It is not a case of one country being prosperous and the other not. England, despite her unemployed and an income tax of 4s 5d in the pound, has faced the question of underfed children. We have not. And England fn her hour of. need is reaping the benefit to-day. Of the thousands who have attested under the Conscription Act, 90 per cent have been passed medically fit and 84 per cent are in the ‘A’ class.” In England every child has his bottle of milk each day. In South Africa we promise the child the surplus milk, but when is there a surplus? “I visited England hvo years ago and was impressed by the healthy appearance of the school children. There the position has been reversed. When I came to Natal 27 years ago, I was impressed by the general air of well-being among the schoolchildren. It was in striking contrast with the impoverished under-fed appearance of the children I had left behind in the industrial north of England.—Sunday Times.