MASS OUTLOOK

Evening Star, Issue 23099, 27 October 1938, Page 16

MASS OUTLOOK

DANGER OF MACHINE AGE MUST BE USED WITH INTELLIGENCE (Special to the ‘ Stab.’] WELLINGTON, Oct. 26. “ To me the question of physical fitness is one of the most important questions facing this country and the world to-day. The machine age we live in has brought many difficulties and we have to be sufficiently awake and of sufficient intelligence to be able to take advantage of the machine age and to be able to extricate ourselves from it,” said the Minister of Internal Affairs and chairman of the National Council of Physical Welfare and Recreation (Mr W E. Parry) to-day, speaking to the physical training directors of the Y.M.C.A. who have come to Wellington for a refresher course.

It was appareftt, Mr Parry said, that if they did not pay closer attention to the machine age they would find people developing into conditions v here the whole of their outlook was determined by the mass. The machine was becoming larger and more complicated No longer men and women were abM to say “ I made that,” for no one person made any one thing to-day. They were just cogs in the wheel. Once, a man could take pride in having made a pair of boots. It was not just his work but the expression of himself To day he would find it hard to lay his finger on a part that was his. Boots passed through many pairs of l ands. They were working in mass and had to be careful they did not think in mass.

Once, continued Mr Parry, parents had boys or girls taught to play the violin or the piano. Now they could cress a button and get their music. They were, in fact, getting physically lazy, a very dangerous thing! They had to be able to use the machine intelligently so that it would save mankind from drudgery, and they had to be able to extricate themselves and participate in recreation for the building up of the human system. He thought that at school it was not enough for children to go through “ physical jerks ” without knowing what happened. They should know something of their internal organs and their physical make-up. The Education Department would be able to do its part, and the Minister of Education was pushing the work along. It would require money for the scheme, but Mr Parry said he believed that the money would be saved in hospital and sickness expenses and in the time which was now lost through sickness.

Mr C. G. Falconer, chairman of the National Committee of the Y.M.C.A., offered the organisation’s service in aiding the Government’s scheme. Others who spoke were the director of education (Mr N. T. Lambourn), the assistant director (Dr C. E. Beeby), Mr C. R. Bach (physical welfare officer of the Government), Mr W A. Jameson (secretary of the National Council of Physical Welfare and Recreation) and Mr Edgar W. Herbert (director of Sydney College of Physical Education and Recreational Leadership).