PROPER USE OF LEISURE

Southland Times, Issue 23726, 26 January 1939, Page 6

PROPER USE OF LEISURE

PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND RECREATION

MENTAL AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

(Special to The Times) ROTORUA, January 25.

“The necessity for physical education and recreation from all angles, including the mental, spiritual and moral well-being of our people, has interested me'personally throughout my life,” said the Minister of Internal Affairs (the Hon. W. E. Parry) at the opening of the New Zealand intermediate and junior swimming championships at Rotorua today. “Today there is greater scope than formerly existed for this work. More leisure has been made possible by the development of the machine process and I am concerned about how that leisure is to be used. Without good health you cannot be in the front rank of mankind. Leisure rightly and intelligently used can be a blessing to mankind; on the other hand, leisure can be a real curse if wrongly used.” To adjust things to meet new conditions, it was not sufficient for this body and that body to continue scolding people by passing harshly worded resolutions and then to retire with a feeling of smug satisfaction that a full part had been played in the community. The country must usefully use more of the people who from time to time become displaced by the machine. It should use them in creating facilities for physical and mental recreation that would have a great and real apjJealto the young people. Hand in hand with the creation of those facilities should come educational and physical instruction and a knowledge and understanding of the human body and its functions. The expert gave advice when a person was buying a machine or a car to acquaint him with its mechanism and working. That, of course, was right. The more attention paid to the machine and its functions the longer it would last and the greater service it would give. “The rule of the expert is logical because of its commonsense,” he said. “The rule the expert lays down for our sensible guidance in the treatment and attention to be given to inanimate machines, is not the rule today which we think of applying to our own bodies —our own human machines. If we were as careless and indifferent about the fuel we used in inanimate machines, as we are accustomed to be in the use of our own human machines, would it be possible to get continuous and reliable service?” In their training athletes, including the swimmers competing at the championships, learned the bodily functions of their sport. They knew, too, that the human body was a wonderful machine. Side by side with this instruction in physical and recreational training, if it was desired to develop something more than big muscles, provision had to be made for mental and cultural development. Leisure used wrongly could

create big muscles and a spirit of irresponsibility. In the campaign now proceeding, a physically and mentally fit nation fit for any emergency is the objective. Unless a deep sense of responsible citizenship went with physical fitness the campaign would fail