We know how, in the stress of affairs brought about
by war, not only individuals, but nations are suddenly
awakened to the fact that what may have been good
enough even a year ago is antiquated and out of date
to-day. Under the pressure of war we are driven,
whether we wish it or not, to put to immediate test
virtually every fact of our daily lives. We find
that almost every machine and well-nigh every method
may be improved—in fact, that it must be
improved.
Boats, aeroplanes, guns, industrial processes, even
the actual business of living itself, all are being
submitted to the test of emergency and are being made
over upon new lines. So it is with our setting-up
exercises. We can no longer afford to waste time
or motion or effort. We are teaching on an intensive
scale and we must take nothing out of a man in preparation;
rather we must add to his store of vitality and energy.
Perhaps we find that the routine of his ordinary work
will strengthen sufficiently his legs and arms.
This is astonishingly true. What we must now
do is to supple him, to quicken his co-ordination,
to improve his poise, and to put his trunk and thorax
into better shape. We must give him endurance,
quickness of response, and resistive force. This,
therefore, being our problem, we eliminate the arm
and leg exercises and go directly for the trunk and
thorax. We must quicken co-ordination and improve
the man’s rapidity of response to command.
And standing out above all is this major principle:
“No vitality should be taken out of a man by
these setting-up exercises; he should not be tired
out, but rather made ready for the regular work of
the day.”
This war in which we are engaged has brought to our
people some all-compelling truths. And the greatest
of these is that our men, the flower of our racial
stock, are deficient physically when put to the test
before examining-boards. When one sees some two
thousand men examined by draft boards to secure two
hundred men for our army, as happened in some cases,
when one reads that in a physical examination for
the sanitary police force in Cleveland thirty-seven
out of forty-two women passed and only twenty-two
men out of seventy-two, one is ready indeed to believe
that we have failed to produce men who can be called
upon when the need arises to defend our country.
[Illustration: Incorrect position,
showing how most men slack
in Swedish exercises by letting
the back bend]
Our athletic sports have produced the right spirit,
as the rush of athletes to the service has shown.
But our calisthenics, our general building-up exercises
have apparently failed in the physical development
of our youth. They are antique. Permit me
to illustrate. Only recently Professor Bolen,
the authority on Swedish exercises, died and left
behind him the record of his work. After twenty-five
years of study he had decided that setting-up exercises
were unnecessary in the case of a man’s legs
or arms or pectoral muscles, and that the attention
should be devoted to the trunk—that is,
to the engine itself.
