SLUMS UNO PHYSIQUE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19986, 29 June 1920, Page 7

SLUMS UNO PHYSIQUE.

FOOD AND HOUSING PROBLEMS.

RESULTS OF CITY LIFE.

A few days ago, stepping in to tho streets of Liverpool, I was offered aid, as usual, with my hag, by the pitiful little crowd of hoarse, rickety, stunted, anaemic children who gather round the stations of our groat cities for the chance of a few coppers (writes the medical correspondent of the London “ Observer ”). they needed my help, not I, theirs. In the course of tho hours which 1 spent in that city, 1 failed to observe so much as one healthy child (skin, blood, skeleton, nasal passages, teeth imaj all be estimated even in the street). No such spectacle as Hus meets tho traveller’s eye in North America, as I ventured to toll tho Liverpudlians in public. And the following morning there appeared in the I rcss many columns of reference to the newly-published report on the physique ot the nation, as revealed bv examinations for military service. Hus explicitly dovotd his hie to the study and advocacy ol national and racial health is doiibtless constantly tempted to magnify Jus olheo by overstating his casebut in eighteen years I have never ventured to nuke allegations so terrible as those non brought before ns by official authority. W hen Sir Auckland decides showed mo tho present findings, about a year ago, apropos the contemplated forma a •MMstry of Health, I doubted whether they would ever he published, to deplorable were they. Tho Government lias assuredly been wise in allowing those documents to bo published after all. And now tho question is whether history is merclv to repeat itself. THE RECRUITING TEST. Memories arc short, and must bo jogged. The revelations of recruiting during the Boor war wore alarming; and tho lato General Sir Frederick Maurice, heir of the noble traditions of Charles Kingsley and Frederick Denison Maurice, wrote an article in “Tho Contemporary Review,” which led to the appointment of two official bodies. There was a great argument that the physical aspect of military training was what wo needed. Accordingly, a Royal Commission on Physical Training was appointed i’oi Scotland. In the course of its inquiries some rare genius seems to have suggested that the defective recruits had once been younger, and Dr (now Sir) Leslie Alackenzie was asked to examine school children in representative districts in Edinburgh. Briefly, the results wore tho medical inspection of school children under the distinguished authority who is now Sir George Newman, of the Ministry of Health; and the medical treatment of school children to some ®xtent. EVILS OF CITY LIFE. Third. AVo aro becoming increasingly an urban people, without having learnt how to live in cities. Again, school clinics and all tho rest of it are mere palliatives against this (at present, though not necessarily) fatal tendency. Civilisation is city-iication : Athens and Jerusalem were cities i.as 1 once heard Professor Geddes reply to a questioner who said, ‘'Then you don’t believe in cities?”.); but cities °i r our present sort arc racially fatal. Their darkness, due to smoke and its consequences. 1 have lately discussed; but; they also involve the breaking up of tho homo, the decadence of breast-feeding, the degradation of adolescence, tho rapid spread of knowledge of contraception, and so forth, which I do not regard as inherently evil, but which is more prono to ruinous abuse than any other form of knowledge I can name. Our cities have been carrying on by tho immigration and destruction of healthy young rural life so long that the rural resources aro woll-nigb, drained—wo aro probably So per cent uroan now—and unless we can reconstruct our urban ways, as, thank Heaven, 1 saw them being reconstructed all over North America last summer, we arc doomed. THE WORST FED PEOPLE. Fourth; Dr Harry Campbell is doubtless right when he says that we are tho worst fed; people in the world. Tho Scottish children used to be reared on (he breast, and then on porridge and milk. They used accord-ingly-to gro-.y into the largest and “lost energetic inhabitants of our islands, {their energy- showing itself alike in their shoving powers in a , Rugby “scrum” and in their aviditv lor education (a very subtle, potent and often forgotten consequence ami symptom of physico-psychicul oherev). In tho Glasgow region now, where halt too population of Scotland resides, the children arc mostly fed on tea, white bread and jam, none of (vlucn contain any vitamines at all and consequently the streets are full of rickets, and the kind of children ono secs in Leeds or Liverpool or Manchester. 1 repeat the opinion already expressed hero that Roman Catholic lurai Hcland is tins only part of these islands where the race i s in a healthy condition But in North America the* Scottish, for instance, are multiplying and dominant and splendid-like"the old-time (Scottish of Scotland ■ r « Y e goins ! ,° d » anything about it. AAhere arc the churches' I. nal . i! , a generation later wo now have ihe evidence derived from that V(TV partial but instructive survey of the nalum wbicn was carried on, especially uurmg die last year or so of the war and in ray judgment the evidence H ye the efreeA that, despite the revelations made earner in the century, despite the establishment of medical inspection and treatment of school children, and despite the Insurance Act “for ibe prevention of sickness, ■’ the national physique lias gone from bad to worse. REASON FOR. DECLINE. . rj .' iie Simons f Ol . this pr0 _ Er( , ; , sh . c (fc _ renovation should bo indicated. They do not require us to assume that for oxampJc. the medical treatment of school children has not been worth whue Nor do they require us to assume that, the Race, the Gerin-PJasm is senile and moribund. I believe that tbov arc:— . IH'st: A steadily and rapidly diminishing proportion of the nation's cllildren aro being born to parents, and in, environments, such as promise thorn the best inheritance, Loth biological or genetic, ami social. In Kensington, where I live, there aro two nnrfq_North and South. Tho North has twice the birth-rate of the South; but the South has the par cuts least affected cither by what I call the racial poisons, or by hereditary defects of unknown origin; and the South could afford air and light and seaside holidays and cream and butter fo r the children, whom it ever more and mere I declines to produce; while these advantages are not available for the children whom North Kensington continues, though diminishinglv, to produce. Evidently a very, very few generations of this, which is typical of the whole nation, must be fatal. School clinics are blessed and precious tilings.

but they are loss than a forlorn hope m such a racial tragedy as this The important"" argument 1 hat tho death-rate is so low among the more jortuinuo that- more of them survive in the long run was studied liv us most carefully during tho sittings ol the National Birlli-ivto Commission in 191-j-IG, and wo found, “beyond a peradvonturo,” that though certainly tho children of, mg., South Kensington, have a lower death-rate, there aiv relatively so low of them that the next generation tends to lie recruited i rom North Kensington. (Suppose that the more fortunate save all of a family of three—n-ot that they have three nowadays, but I cun afford to give that away—while the less fortunate save only sis much % damaged, out of a family of ten. You see where we are going, in the ratio of two to one). Second: Our adolescents, whom I prefer to call our pre-parents, are drinking more than ever, thus poisoning the race.