WITH WHAT PURPOSE!

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 1655, 7 October 1920, Page 10

WITH WHAT PURPOSE!

GERMANS CULTIVATE FITNESS.

On Sunday, June 13 (writes a correspondent of the "Times" from Germany), I walked for some 20 kilometres through the country districts between Hanau and Frankfort, and saw for myself the muscle-malyng industry to which young Germany is devoting all its spare time. I passed thousands of young Germans of both sexes marching along the roads in military order, mostly in bands of 40 to 80 men and women. All carried knapsacks, and in nearlv every case three or four musical instruments (mostly Tyrolean guitars). The usual plan is for these bands to leave the .cities and towns on Saturdav afternoon and evening, and camp out for the night. Some carry small canvas tents, something like an American Army "pup-tent," but most sleep in the open air. Both men and women are loosely dressed, the men without coats, as a rule, and the women with open bodices and no corsets. They present a fine healthy appearance, and, although the heavy marching will not make the women beautiful, it will improve, rather than interfere with, their breeding capacities—which is what the Germans waat, as they seem to be determined to replace the men she has lost as quickly as possible, and every German village is literally swarming with little machine-gun-ners.

In these great marching movements, voung people of both sexes march together and pass the night together in the fields. German vital statistics before the war were notoriously incomplete, and it would not be surprising if a notable percentage of illegitimate births were passed over in silence in the future. The voung of Germany is now being taught that physical strength is the thing most to be admired in man and child-bearing in woman. The explanation generally given for these outings, that they are the result of purely economic causes, does not satisfy me. When a German says that the young people cannot afford the pleasures of the cities, that the only reason they march is because they cannot pay fourth-class train fares, and that there is no other way in which they can obtain an outing, I am sceptical. Germans were always fo-nd of "vereins" of all kinds, and before the war I have seen marching clubs and tourist organisations on the road; but nothing like what I saw on Sunday.

This is now almost a national movement. It is the youth of a nation training hard to make muscle, to breed a new, strong, and numerous generation—whether for rebuilding or for revenge T do not know.