Your Body At Its Best Ch 4

In an article that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post of August 8, 1959, the distinguished military analyst, Hanson W. Baldwin, wrote: "From September 1948 to November 1958 the rejection rate for draftees for physical, mental or moral reasons was 38.3 percent. In the same period there was a further rejection by the armed forces of 6.6 percent of those passed by their draft boards. And even so, those who are accepted for military service are a disappointing lot.  In the words of Dr. G. Ott Romney, deputy executive director of the President's Council on Youth Fitness, 'Sedentarianism, push-buttonitis and in-doorism have taken a heavy toll of fitness.' "

A few years ago in a White House conference on the physical fitness of American youth, it was reported that in a test given to 4264 U. S. school children aged six to sixteen, close to 60 percent failed to measure up to minimum standards. This same test was passed with flying colors by all but 8.7 percent of 2879 European children in the same age group.

This report shocked President Eisenhower, and caused him to put his personal influence and the power of the White House behind a move to get the facts in this matter of the physical fitness of American youth, and to find out what needed to be done about it. The fitness of American youth was a matter of great concern to the President. One of the things that disturbed him, they said, was to meet young people who "lack the spirit" to take care of their bodies.

It is said that the President, during World War II, saw many young men rushed into front line foxholes before they could be hardened physically for the rigors of combat. This, he felt, could have been prevented if the nation had a plan to assure its civilian youth a higher degree of physical fitness.
 
In the period of six and one half years from July 1, 1950, to the start of 1957, according to a report by U. S. News and World Report, August 2, 1957, 4,700,000 draft registrants were examined by the armed forces at induction centers. Of those 4.7 million youths examined 1,600,000 - almost exactly one third - were found to be unfit for military duty.

In addition to those youths turned down at induction centers, an additional 468,000 had already been rejected by local draft boards for "manifestly disqualifying defects" - physical or mental. Add these to the 4.7 million who were examined by the armed forces, and you find that out of a total of 5,200,000 young men called up by the draft, 26 percent were found to be unfit for physical reasons.

• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 1
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 2
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 3
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 5
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 6
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 7
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 8