PHYSICAL FITNESS

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 October 1939, Page 5

PHYSICAL FITNESS

A DUTY TO THE NATION. ' The activities of the English National Fitness Council were increased and intensified by Hitler’s warmongering a few months ago. In the midst of British preparations to resist Hitlerian aggression this statement appeared in ■one of the Council’s booklets: “Today many people are 1 asking how best they can. help their country. The foundation of national service is good l health. To be fit and to help others to be fit is to make a very real contribution to the national well-being. “The fitness campaign is not a stunt ■of ephemeral importance, but an attempt to further a long-term policy based on the foundation of British traditions and relying for its accomplishment on the free institutions which characterise the structure of British national life.

“No one can make another person fit or take exercise for him. When all is said and done, the success of the campaign depends in the end on the extent to which people of every age. but especially of the younger generation, realise that they are called to make a personal effort, and that without such effort they cannot hope to be fit. Facilities for certain forms of exercise are admittedly inadequate, but others are within the reach of almost everyone. No one who neglects to make a. conscious effort to develop his physical powers can rightly blame the Borough Council or anyone else. The ‘man in the street,’ has the most important part to play in this> campaign. His first task is to conquet his own apathy and increase his own effort to be fit, and his second is to join with colleagues, friends, and neighbours in working for a better provision of facilities for himself and for others. Active and sustained demand is the surest stimulus to supply. In the words of His Majesty the King, ‘We have hero a duty to ourselves and to onr generation.'