UNFIT NEW ZEALANDERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 196, 27 January 1915, Page 3

UNFIT NEW ZEALANDERS.

STARTLING REV E LATIONiS. HALF TUB WOULD-liE SOLDIERS REJECTED. It comes rather as a surprise to leart that fifty per cent, of the New Zealandera now offering for service prove to b« ineligible, owing to physical defects. \ et tliis is the fact ascertained by the Christchurch Sun reporter who had a conversation on the fact with the principal medical officer in Christchurch. And, moreover, it seems to be giving t ie recruiting authorities some concern 1 aase it is increasing the difficulty in ! .ping up the projected supply of new

i ..! to the desired 01)0 a month. It v;! i computed that by December next ; ' 'JO men between the age of JO and .'■'. l would he accepted, or a propt . ion of i.3 per cent, of the "servicca! . ' population of the Dominion. The result of the medical examination Dr. Anderson, the officer referred to, confesses has caused some considerable surprise, although in conversation with the Sun reporter, he recalled the circumstance that some four years ago there had been rather a serious complaint going in trie same direction. On that occasion, there had been an invitation issued for New Zealand recruits for the Royal Navy, and the applicants for enlistment were examined by the naval surgeon at Auckland. These officers raised quite a storm of indignation by their subsequent remarks on the standard of the physique of young New Zealanlers. They had gone so far as to say that only about eight or ten per cent, were fit for service in the Royal Navy, less than would have qualified in the East End of London. As to how far these statements were true, Colonel Anderson could not, of course, speak, but his own experience now goes to show that the proportion of physically unfit is surprisingly high in a young country. Tt is true that a large proportion of the defects would not appear serious to the man in the street, but unfortunately this is a matter in which the judgment of the man in tho street does not materially influence things. For instance, teeth trouble will probably be discounted by the casual mind as it often is by the subject. Punch recently had a suggestive picture in which a burly volunteer for service being rejected on account of the state of his teeth, is represented as angrily turning on the recruiting officer and saying: "Man, I want to fight the Germans not to eat them." But it is just the fitness for fighting which is affected. On this point. Colonel Anderson made matters clear. He said: "The state of the teeth of our young men is simply shocking. We very rarely see a mouth of good teeth, and of those who are accepted, nearly ill require a certain amount of dental attention. We will not take a man who has a single unsound tooth in his head. It must he either properly stopped or extracted. We must see that every man has a certain proportion of good teeth, and that he can masticate his food. This does not mean that they must be natural teeth. We will take a man who has not a single natural tooth, so long as we [ are satisfied with the plates. When we block a man because of the state of his teeth, he is sometimes inclined to argue, and say that he has never felt the slightest pain or inconvenience from them in his life. That may be quite true, but what we have to look to is that on active service he will be living under entirely different conditions to those he has been accustomed to in New Zealand. Exposure to cold and wet, exhaustion and want of food will soon 'play up' with the man with carious teeth, and neuralgia and other troubles will ensue. • You can quite understand that a man suffering from the. agonies of neuralgia will not be a very efficient soldier in the field. That is why the regulations absolutely insist on sound teeth."

Other causes of rejection are defective feet and legs. 'Flat-footed men are of no use, not merely because they do not loot pretty on parade, but for the more practical reason tliat they must prove bad workers and that an average march would knock them out. Varicose veins, variocele, defective eyesight and hearing are sources of inefficiency; so are skin diseases, and of course, heart weakness, the latter being declared to be a five per cent experience. However, the toll of inefficients soon mounts up. and of a batch one day no fewer than seventy were rejected. Naturally the story Dr Anderson had to tell raised the general question: is our young population on the whole really so defective as it is made to appear by these figures, and if so, why? Colonel Anderson, in reply, said tliat he had nothing to go on, but the statement of the naval surgeons he had already j quoted. Still, he would not be at ail ■ surprised to find their comparison with 1 the population of East London correct. Tn New Zealand the young people of the working classes live under much easier conditions than in Great Britain, and they naturally become physically "soft." It is the inhabitants of cold countries, and countries where living is harder to gain, who make the best soldiers. "Tf you had to lead men," said Colonel Anderson, T am sure you would sooner have 500 Norwegians at your back than a much larger number of men from southern Italy. The fact is that the sons of the pioneers are not the men their fathers were. It is all a matter of the environment in which we live. The oak tree grows in New Zealand as big and healthy as it docs in England: but cut up a New Zealand oak and an English oak, and look at the difference in the timber." "But our athletes are as good as the best in the worldf' Ah, yes! You get picked men who can compete with any race in the world. We get some splendid specimens of manhood; it is a pleasure to see them stripped, lint here is a fact which cannot be contravcrted —out of every hundred men who present themselves for examination, we have to reject about fifty: and that/emember. in accordance with the scale of examination which is fixed by regulation. and which is the same throughout the Empire."