the draft age than heretofore, and it is to be hoped preclude hereafter 

 the dissemination of sensational and alarming assertions concerning 

 the alleged physical decline of American manhood. 



RESULTS OF THE ARMY REJECTION EXPERIENCE 



IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 

 The experience of the United Kingdom has been much the same as 

 in this country. At the time of the South African War three out of 

 every five men had been originally rejected on the ground of physical 

 unfitness for active military service. Out of 679,703 recruits examined 

 between 1893 and 1902 only 424,651, or 62.5 per cent., were accepted. 

 As observed in a letter from London, dated March 5, 1918, in the 

 Journal of the American Medical Association, of April 6, 1918, "An 

 army of over a quarter of a million had thus to be cast aside because 

 it was below the military standard of the time." If the rules and 

 regulations had been in conformity to the observations of Sir W. 

 Aitken, Examiner in Medicine for the Military Medical Service, and 

 Pathologist attached to the Military Hospitals during the Russian War, 

 and had been adopted by Great Britain at the outset of the present 

 war, a much larger army would actually have been available and 

 without any serious risk whatever regarding the physical efficiency of 

 the men for active duty in the field. The present necessity of replacing 

 the enormous loss of man-power in consequence of the war is resulting 

 in the lowering of the qualifications for service : but it is to be appre- 

 hended that many of the rules and regulations are not in strict con- 

 formity to scientific principles of anthropology and medicine. The 

 committee appointed by the British Government in 1903 on the Alleged 

 Deterioration of the National Physique made a systematic investiga- 

 tion and an admirable report in 1904, the recommendations of which 

 were entirely disregarded. The need for an anthropometric survey, 

 emphasized at the time and repeatedly brought forward by the Royal 

 Anthropological Institute, has been clearly recognized by those familiar 

 with the facts. The Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies set up by 

 the Learned Societies and Corporations of Great Britain has recently 

 appointed a strong committee to prepare a plan for a new survey, the 

 committee being of the opinion that "Such a survey is a matter of 

 national importance and one that can be carried out by machinery 

 already in existence. All that is now necessary is to set up an Advisory 

 Council to co-ordinate the work carried on by the varied Government 

 departments and bureaus to deal with the statistics as they are col- 

 lected." Such a survey is not only required for Great Britain and 

 Ireland, but as much if not more so for the United States. The gen- 

 eral principles of such a survey have been brought forward in the 

 discussions of the Committee on Anthropology of the National Re- 

 search Council, which, however, has failed to secure the required 

 governmental support. The lamentable results of ignorance and indif- 



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