MOTHERS O' MEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 217, 13 September 1930, Page 4 (Supplement)

MOTHERS O' MEN.

STRONG AND MIGHTY.

INHERIT PHYSICAL STRENGTH.

Men inherit physical strength from their mothers. Great athletes may have puny fathers, Jbut there are practically no examples of weak mothers in their cdfse histories.

■So far, science has 'been unable to place a definite linger on the causebut the effect is beyond dis-pute. This statement may bring resentful jeers •from the robust fathers of athletic young men and women, but it is accepted as a fact by physical experts. Vitality, strength and endurance are drawn from the maternal side of the family. In an age when mien settled their problems with clubs, spears and heavybladed swords, a people in ancient Italy angered because there weren't enough wives to go round among the warriors, set out to remedy matters. They attacked other people, slaughtered the •men, enslaved the children and carried off the women to their hute and tents. And from their mating with these" women of the Sabines, the Romans built a race of power. .•

History 'has little record of this greatest mass experiment in "mater familias," but romance and. mythology have attributed the might of the. Roman Empire to the physical qualities bequeathed to their progeny by the mothers of this despoiled race.

A iragic but magnificent fate, that of the Sabine women, torn from their •homes, violated by rough, warn or s, but leaving to posterity children who were