SEA CADETS SCHEME

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22695, 6 April 1937, Page 12

SEA CADETS SCHEME

LORD NUFFIELD'S HELP PHYSICAL FITNESS CAMPAIGN [from our own correspondent] LONDON, March 17 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 has been 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 £IOO,OOO is forthcoming.

The campaign was launched at the Mansion House, 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, said 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 tho nation. Tho voluntary system of the corps gave to its members a discipline of will and a trained habit of mind, and made them valuable citizens.

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 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. " 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. " 1 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 tho million bayonets of Mussolini, as fine a body of young men raised from London as ever you could wisfi to see."