Ogden Daily Standard | 1914-05-01 | Page 5 | Tall Men and Women Common

TALL MEN AND WOMEN COMMON In nu address at Battle Creek. Dr. Newell Dwlght Hillls discussed the deterioration de-terioration of the Anglo-Saxon physique phy-sique and made the statement that whereas In I s :: the standard for ad-mission ad-mission into the British army was sl (eel it Is now fl e feet. A contributor to the columns of the New- York Times says that Dr. Hillls has been misled. According to this) authorlty( the required height in 1 Sl,ri was five feet un five inches, and it is In 1914, rive feet and three inches There has been a variation In each direction within the last century. Presumably all anthropologists will agree witobut looking up the figures that Dr Hillls erretl greath in belie-ing belie-ing thnt there was ever a time when a nation wtihin the ken of history could maintain military efficiency while doinanding of its soldiers a height of "six feet iu their socks." There may have been times when Riants were common and six footers sufficient to carry conquering arms for a nation of 50,000,000. But if so thl re is no record of it. It has been stated, whether rightly or not. that the average height of man is greater In Kentucky and In the Russian provinces, provin-ces, Georgia, than anywhere else in the world Yet Kentuckiaris six feet tal are by no means the rule it ha;-, been frequently asserted, and It Is doubtless true, ,that the armor worn I" Ui hard the In n-hearted, and others oth-ers of his period, is a tight fit for the average Englishman or American today, fltad that it Is by QO means hard t" ilnd young men who cannot gel Into it at all. Phoieal culturlats In this country 9eem to agree that both men and women of the present time are, upon the average, larger and stronger than thd) were a century ago, or centuries ago. At any rate, it Is quite plain tha the British empire could never have beeu builded if the work had been cut out upon a plan that excluded from the army all Britons less than six feet tall. Louisville Courier-Journal