KEEPING FIT.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 July 1922, Page 6

KEEPING FIT.

THE VALUE OF GAMES DOCTOR’S ADVICE TO CADETS. Valuable advice was given to Senior Cadets on Monday night in a lecture delivered by Dr. G. H. Thomson, under the auspices of the recently formed New Plymouth Community Club. The title of the address was “Physical development of our generation: what are the prospects and what are we doing for it ?” “Let us cast our minds back some three generations or so,” said the doctor in introducing his subject. “Then we find New Zealand being colonised by a race of hardy pioneers, selected settlers most of them, whose chief atiribut ?s were grit, thriftiness, and simple living. They were possessed of a wholesome fear of their Maker, but of no man. Difficulties met were there only to be surmounted. It is due to the' impetus of their start that New Zealand is so far advanced to-day. Now, coming down nearer to our time, we find this race contaminated by an’inrush of settlers of a poorer physical class, attracted by the discovery of gold, and they poured in unchecked by any selection. Y’et. even a generation ago. we find a hardiness that is vanishing and ha* almost vanished entirely in our towns. It was nothing to our fathers I to walk, say up to 20 miles- for a ‘footy’ match, and' not to look on but play? They esteemed it a favor to 'be volunteer militiamen in order that they might be fit to defend their homes should the occasion arise. Many were in the constant habit of walking some miles before their daily work in order to go to a rifle range for practice. WHAT THE WAR REVEALED. “Now, let us get into our own generation. During the recent war the most ghastly surprise to thinking people in our Dominion was the large number of young fellows turned down as unfit for military service. Examinations revealed extraordinary defects. It has been said that the later reinforcements were composed of surgical repairs, artificial teeth, and chilled feet. What a dreadful thing to be said of any young man that he was not fit to defend his own womenfolk? Now why was it so? Was it their fault, or was it the fault of their environment? “Children are born fit enough in New Zealand: they are fit enough in our primary and secondary schools, but there i* a space between that end adult life where *ome pernicious falling away takes place. It is the point where actual enforced fitness under school discipline is relaxed for the partial hbertv of young adult life. It is a bad break in our scheme of education. We lav fine foundations, but we let the rot yet into the walls before the roof is on. In America to-day with baseball, and inEngland with football we have a few C pl?nd ; div fit men who perform to give enjoyment for the vast crowds, somexiTnes of over 100.000 people, whose only exertion is the exercise to their lungs in shouting and inhaling cigarette .moke That -ate of affairs rapidly noirim" here in New Zealand. "■Now let us look at New Zealands ‘ athletics. Take our national game. '» J Ruo-bv football: In Dunedin at present, l ’ in the High School and primary schools,. - there a-e over 1.100 boys playing Rugby . ..GT’r.qf’ That total outnumber.*- ihose

’ootoaii. x.'ciu - - plavirm in all the other grades, wheretho?e grade's, owing to the fact that several years’ reinforcements from school football accumulate therein, should outnumber the schools many times over. Why the Where do they get to alter leavin c school. Many ioeeome spectators. T’ ne y often have over 12,000 people watchmg club Rugby in Dunedin. -PC RT -OR FOX TROTTING ’ "Now in New Plymouth the discrepancy must he even greater, for you have not the amount of soccer, hock?,, and cross-country running as counterattraction-:. The young do not garden in anv numbers. lam afraid tha many hundreds of them are merely spectator* Th greatest curse in our present day sport ’ie to make it more spectacular’. to make it more attracts to the onlookers. Rugby unions are always wanting bigger gates in order to spend the money on the spectator, to c-ive him ’fetter accommodation An old tin shed ’.s good enuogh for the man who provides the attraction. the monev would be better spent in acqr.n • fo. more ground in order to make room for everybody to play and to attract the XverUnet the Ipectators. The more we cater for the spectators the more our oames go downhill in value as benefit, to the race. , .. ■‘There are many young men in thy town whose greatest exertion is a turions game of ‘put and take’; spend' their evenings fox-trotting an. card plaving-nuite good amusements no doubt, but the voting ones would do more for our race if they spent the time at gymnastics or boxing-gloves. lam not advocating that we should give up all our modern comforts and pleasure merely to become hardy, but let me urge von to make yourselves fit and to keep fit. I would never tell anyone that he must not smoke nor drink, but I would sav. don’t make a sink of your body it was oriven vou to use: don t abuse it. Tak? up <*oine moderately strenuous game and play it. Don’t be spectators: don’t crowd the grandstand. Don a Jersey and get into the field of play. Don t look on at boxing contests: join a clasand put the gloves on yourselves.