A FIT NATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 75, 31 March 1937, Page 12

A FIT NATION

NAVY LEAGUE'S PART

(From "The Post's" Representative.) , LONDON, March 10.

Another step forward in Britain's physical fitness campaign is being taken with the assistance of the Navy League. London is to have its own corps of Sea Cadets, and an appeal for £150,000 is made to raise funds for the development, and expansion of the corps as a whole. Lord Nuffield has promised £50,000 on the condition that the remaining £100,000 is forthcoming. The campaign was launched at the Mansion House yesterday, when the ; Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Inskip, Sir Alan Anderson, Admiral the Earl of Cork and Orrery, and Lord Lloyd (president of the Navy League) asked the City of London for its support. A large sum has already been donated in addition to Lord Nuffield's gift. Sir Thomas. Inskip, giving wholehearted support' to the appeal, • declared that it was upon organisations such as the cadet corps of the League that the Government depended for assistance in its plan for improving the health and physique of the nation. The voluntary system of the corps gave its members a discipline of will and a trained habit of mind, and, made them valuable citizen's.

Lord Lloyd deplored the fact, that two out of every three men in.England, offering themselves as recruits for the forces, were rejected as unfit. It was, he said, a. terrible indictment against the nation. As for physical training, it had been estimated that 70 per cent, of England's young men never, got a chance to look after their bodies or to secure physical training —a very different thing from dictatorship countries, where marvellous things were being.done for youth. A few years ago the Navy League organisation had been banned in some quarters because they had refused to igive up the training of discipline among their youth. Today there were everincreasing demands from centres, and. the majority of them were democratic centres, where parents wished their boys to be trained and taught .discipline.

"I do not believe that we are going to exist as a people very long unless we can train up our boys and girls as other countries are doing." said Lord Lloyd. "I think we have got the best stuff in the world to train with a tradition which no other peoples have—freedom and a history. Please provide us with the money we require and I promise you that you will see, without the million bayonets of Mussolini, as fine a body of young men raised from London as ever you could wish. to see." .'..'.*:;. ..,..•