ARE WE A C3 PEOPLE?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23827, 30 November 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

ARE WE A C 3 PEOPLE?

Facing, the Issue t : ,

• . By KOTARE

IT is always worth while to notice the reaction of • the public mind to a neAv idea, or to an' old one forcibly thrust on its attention. Last week a medical authority, basing his conclusions on his experience in examining re- ' emits, informed us that he was appalled by the low standard of physical fitness. C 3 is far too optimistic a category for a considerable proportion of our young men, if wc arc to take his verdict at its face value.

I havo tried to get as many different minds as I could make contact with to unburden themselves on this vital issue. One man insisted it was all nonsense. The young New Zealander was the finest, physical specimen on oartli. take him by and large. What country of our size had produced so many first-class • athletes? ion could not argue away the All Blacks. No amount of scientific data would make him budge. It was not very convincing. He faced the problem with his mind made up. The /physical superiority of the New Zealander had become an axiom. He would as soon think of questioning it as he would of denying ilie law of gravitation. I classified hi'm as the fervid patriot who had managed to get along with a few ideas, borrowed only heaven knows whence, and who judged everything new by effect on his own self-esteem. New Zealand was the greatest country in tho world because it had succeeded in producing him. His own school was the best school in the country because he had been a pupil there. I suppose most of us have a man like thht concealed somewhere in our make-up, but we usually try to keep him in the background. The Pessimist

Number two took exactly tho opposite view. He had suspected as much for a long time. What coukl you expect from a people who had inherited from the pioneers a magnificent physique and who had an environment that should have made it still finer, who had bepn born into conditions that should have made for intellectual range and flexibility, and who found their greatest physical enjoyment in watching horses and other men display ' their prowess, and found their chief mental stimulus in the products of Hollywood? We were on our-way to what 3lr. jtfantalini, in an inspired moment, called "the demnition bowwows." I classified'him as the temperamental pessimist who finds his chief enjoyment in ' being miserable. Some /people are born that way. They resent any suggestion that things are not as bad as they could be. , This is the type that refuses to be comforted by good news. If word comes of a great victory, he is sure that the public is being prepared for some really 'startling bad news. There is always something desperate that is being held back.. So everything that might cheer \is has to be discountedand every admission of failure has to be magnified. We'have to tolerate him for we cannot change him. And it is a pity' to interfere with anyone's small pleasures these critical days. r The British Way

But most people took what I should say is the ordinary British attitude. They thought that the medical critics must have some solid ground for their unfavourable topinion of out- physical fitness, and that the facts they have discovered must be explained and faced. Every self-complacency out of which Ave were violently jolted should in the long run help us to establish a better way of life. If thero was evil working beneath the surface it was well we should know it and take steps to drag it to the upper air and cope with it jn the full light of day. The men who pointed out the evil did not create it. If they were exaggerating, so much the better. But we could not dodge the issue now it had been seriously raised. That is essentially the British attitude. Mussolini, in his now famous 6peech, has tried to convince the world and particularly the Italians that his countrymen are sound realists who insist on knowing the truth. They come out at their best when they know the atv orst. Onco lie did try that'game. In his pre-Fascist days he roused his countrymen to fury by declaring that the Italians were not, and never would be, a military nation. Here- are his -exact words: "An Italian Army has never won. A 7 sad affirmation, already made by Nicollo Machiavelli. War? With an army that cannot win? No. When these nationalists speak of war we seem to see them blowing cracked tin trumpets;' <we seem to see them seriously taking aim with a wooden rifle." That early excursion into plain truth-telling seems to have cured him of the habit'.

Facing Hard Facts But we can, 'with plenty of warrant from our history, insist, that at all times the British would rather know the truth when it is unfavourable to their self-esteem. "It is a commonplace," writes E. E. Kellett, "that if you want to. please the British public you must, tell them unpleasant home truths. Statesmen do not seem to know this. "During the war (the •last one) , they forgot the national characteristic. To keep people hopeful they tried to hinder the dessimination of had news and. of course, they failed. Had they scattered it broadcast, the country would have borne up as that typical Englishwoman, Mrs.Gamp, bore up on the death of her husband—with a fortitude hardly to be distinguished from hilarity." I j suppose the only aspect of our war effort that really rouses indignatioh among British peoples is the futility of so much of the censorship. Wo can take anything, but we demand to know. That was the frame of mind I found among the gtcnt majority of the men whose opinion I asked on the medical disparagement of our physical fitness. This must be tracked down, its full extent investigated, and its causes discovered and eliminated. If it is diet, as many think, then a whole world of knowledge of dietetics is available for us, and , only needs applying. Jf, as some, think, there has been too much dwelling on sickness and hospitals these last years, and a sickness complex lias been created through the wide dissemination of half-baked medical knowledge and the constant contemplation of an open hospital door, then that situation is also not beyond our powers to copo with.

When the famous French physician, Dr. Knock, bought a. practice and found it disgustingly healthy, he began a campaign to make bis constituency healthconscious. Ho lectured, distributed hand-bills, put up posters and had the gratification of having the whole community either in hospital or lined up for admission as soon as thero was a vacancy. ' Things obviously cannot bo left whero they are. Even with a war on wo must know where we stand on this supremo ■ factor in. all our future welfare.