A JOB FOR ALL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 244, 16 October 1939, Page 5

A JOB FOR ALL

KEEPING FIT The activities of the English National Fitness Council were increased and intensified by Hitler’s warmongering a few months’ago. In the midst of British preparations to resist Hitlerian aggression this statement appeared in one of the council’s booklets: “To-day many people are asking how best they can help their country. The foundation of national service is good health. To be fit and to help others to be fir. is to make a very real contribution to the national wellbeing. “The fitness campaign is not a stunt of ephemeral importance but an attempt to further a long-term policy based on the foundation of British traditions and relying for its accomplishment on the free institutions which characterise the structure of British national life. “No one can make another person fit or take exercise for him. When all is said and done, the success of the campaign depends in the end on the extent to which people of every age —but especially of the younger generation—realise that they are called, to make a personal effort, and that without such effort they cannot hope to be fit. Facilities for certain forms of exercise are admittedly inadequate, but others are within the reach of almost everyone. No one who neglects to make a conscious and sustained effort to develop his physical powers can rightly blame the borough council or anyone else. The ‘man in the street’ has the most important part to play in this campaign. His first task is to conquer his own apathy and increase his own effort to be fit, and his second is to join with colleagues, friends and neighbours in working for a better provision of facilities for himself and for others. Active and sustained demand is the surest stimulus to supply. In the words of His Majesty the King, ‘We have here a duty to ourselves and to our generation.’ ”