GERMAN SECOND LINE TROOPS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1380, 30 March 1915, Page 4

GERMAN SECOND LINE TROOPS.

A British medical mao, Dr G. L. Finlay, who spent the first three and a-half months of the war in Germany, has given a representative of the London Times some interesting views of the marked contrast he noticed between Germany’s first and second line troops. The latter, be says, reveal a much less high order of physical strength. They suffered much more than the younger troops, and are swelling the lists of the sick in' large numbers. “In them,” he continues, “the essential weakness of the German people is revealed—the tendency to get out of condition at a relatively early age.” There is, of course, no question that man for man Britons of from 35 to 40 are lar and away superior in physique to Germans of the same age. It is between these years that British traditions of athleticism and fatness tell most. The average German has, by that time, ceased to be an outdoor man. He does not take exercise in the regular, dutiful, almost solemn way in which the average Briton takes it. This is one of the reasons why we can look forward to the spring hopefully. Germany's second line troops will not, physically, be nearly as good as Great Britain’s.