PHYSICAL CULTURE IN FRANCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19261, 27 August 1924, Page 10

PHYSICAL CULTURE IN FRANCE.

A GREAT REVIVAL. SCIENCE OF COOKING. (Fbom Our Own Correspondent ) LONDON, July 19. Mr F. A. Ilornibrook spent a week or two in Paris during the progress of tno Olympic Games, end, among other things, has returned with a very high opinion of the physical culture methods of the French Flo visited Joinvillc, which is the Aldershot of F'rance, and studied the military methods of training. German methods, lie maintains, have been imported into English military training in some extent, and now wo have the Guards imitating the goose step. In Franco they concentrate on the slow movements first of all to build up muscle and strength, and then the work is to produce agility. Like the English army they have a good many games in their training programme, and they are going in for boxing very much. The punches and guards have been made a matter of drill. There are orthopiedio clynies for the curing of flat chests, flat feet, and the treatment of spinal curvature. Not only in the army, but among civilians, there seems to have been a great physical culture revival. In the largo towns the municipalities have their gymnasia. In addition, there are excellent journals dealing with every form of sport—boxing, wrestling, swimming, road racing, and bicycling. In the restaurants amongst young men the conversation concerns sport and athletics just as much as it does among the young men of the dominions. A thing that is very much in favour of the French as an athletic race is their eating and cooking. The proper use of vegetables, and the fact that the midday meal is a ceremony that is performed leisurely, the drinking of wine instead of spirits, and the absence of drunkenness, are all matters which help to keep the nation physically fit. The French athlete continues to drink light wine during hia training. On the ether hand the Finns are all total abstainers. “The French business man.” said Mr Ilornibrook, “like the American business man goes in for physical training a great deal, but whereas the former takes two hours for his lunch, the latter swallows it in' a few minutes. The result is that the American swallows more patent medicines in a day (bar. a Frenchman does in a year.”