Keeping Fit All the Way | Page 9

members of the Council of National Defense are likely to forget, in the excess of their patriotism and loyalty, that there is one edict higher than that of the greatest government in the world. When Nature gives an order there is no appeal to a higher court, and the excuse that a man has not the time to obey, or is doing something that his country most urgently needs, has no weight in that court. When Nature touches a man on the shoulder and says, "Stop!" he stops. The penalty of frayed nerves, overworked brains, and underworked bodies is failure of body and mind. The premonitory symptoms are irritability, quarreling, depression, fierceness and inefficiency of effort, and finally complete breakdown. Three to four hours a week physical exercise under a scientifically tested plan and arrangement will keep these men fit. Is the price in this emergency too high to pay?
PHYSICAL FITNESS A VITAL FACT
Up to the time when this world conflagration started, a man's physical fitness was merely a matter of individual interest. The general health of the community was important, but that fact was not sufficiently pressing to do much more than attract the attention of the health boards, and perhaps a few recently organized and semi-philanthropic bodies. But suddenly there flamed out a war in Europe, and at once the countries involved found that upon the physical fitness of the people would depend their lives and freedom. It was no longer an academic question. It became an immediate and vital fact.
In September of 1914 the writer placed the following suggestion on the top of his syndicate athletic article:
AMERICANS AWAKE!
Guard your shores and train your men, Teach your growing youth to fight; Make your plans ere once again Ships of foes appear in sight.
Teach new arts until you hold In your bounds all things you need. Then you can't be bought or sold; From commercial bonds be freed!
If Manhattan rich you'd save, If your western Golden Gate-- Train a field force, rule the wave. Every day you're tempting fate!
Build the ships and train to arms, Make your millions fighting strength That shall frighten war's alarms Ere they reach a challenge length.
He was immediately assailed as a militarist, and yet, had we but taken those preparatory steps, millions of lives might have been saved.

CHAPTER IV
And thus we approach one of the problems which this book is designed to solve. There are eight million men in this country between the ages of forty-five and sixty-four. Probably we may count upon another million from the men of sixty-four to seventy who would be "prospects," as the mining-men say. These men represent nine-tenths of the financial and executive strength of the United States.
THE SENIOR SERVICE CORPS
When I started the experiment of the Senior Service Corps at New Haven, in the spring of 1917, all my men were over forty-five, and several of them had passed the seventy mark; yet all found increased health and efficiency from the prescribed regime. There was a distinct gain, not only in health, but in spirits and in temper. Nerves that had been at high tension relaxed to normal. Effort that had seemed exhaustive became pleasurable. The ordinary problems of business or finance, once so apt to be vexatious, lost their power to produce worry. In fact, these men had renewed their youth; they had altered the horizon-line of advancing age, across which only clouds of doubt and apprehension could be seen, to that of youth, radiant with the sunshine of hope and the promise of accomplishment.
[Illustration: INITIAL HIKE OF FIRST SENIOR SERVICE CORPS]
This war has started some new thoughts and has given emphasis to others that may not be new but which have never been forced home. One of these is the value of physical efficiency. A social scientist said some twenty years ago that the "greatest nation of the future would be the one which could send the most men to the top of the Matterhorn." Nations now realize that in such a time as this all men up to forty may be required for the firing-line; and this means that all the men from forty to seventy must be rendered especially efficient and physically fit in order to stand back of the fighting forces as a dependable reserve--money, power, and brains.
[Illustration: HIKE OF A SENIOR CORPS]
[Illustration: THESE MEN, ALTHOUGH OVER FORTY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE, MARCHED FOR OVER FOUR HOURS WITHOUT DISCOMFORT]
THE BASIC IDEA
This was the idea of the development of the Senior Service Corps--to take men who are over military age and make them physically fit for whatever strain may come. It has resulted in not only making them physically fit, but in practically renewing their youth. The experimental (New Haven) company of a hundred, varying in age from forty-five to over seventy, in weight