The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-05-07
MAY HARM
 ENGLISH WOMEN,
 PHYSICIANS SAY
Sex Extinction May Result From Too Strenuous Exer- else by Modern Girls,
 Specialist Says
By NORMAN H. WATSON
Special Correspondent of The Ase-Hcral
 Copyright. 1929. by The AEe-Herald)

Special Correspondent Of The Age Herald
 Copyright, lee2, by The AEe-Herald)
 London, May 6.-English women do not get off street cars and busses back wards. This is a striking fact but 1t has been largely overlooked Ono never sees the nervous woman witm many bundles who after careful consideration puts the wrong foot foremost from the car step and falls into a pathetic, but silly heap. More over. English women more often than not get on and off before the vehicle stop. a .breath-taking spectacle for the. foreigners. You see the tall young flapper in the usual tweeds, woolen socks and flat heels, suddenly shove her hat on her head. get "set' start running like a streak and swing on to a speeding bus. Nobody pays tho slightest attention. no moro than when the flapper or her older sister leaps from a bus driving through a crowded streetfi ducks under horses startled head reaches the sidewalk to drop into her usual air of impossible dignity.
 London busses ply all the main traffic streets in almost continual procession and they seldom stop. so that women have had to choose be- tween long waiting and an exercise of masculine agility. The point is they learned quickly because they know how to walk in the first place. They belong to a strenuously athlet- ic generation which Is taking an in- creasing part in sports heretofore considered distinctly masculine, hock- ey. football, foot racing. lacrosse. And they ask no favors, apparently, although Hon. Mrs. Arthur Hamilton. who will try to swim the channel this summer, made what her sister athletes thought a shameiessly fem mist confession when she said that swimming the storming waters be- tween France and England at night was rather difficult. The screech of the sirens from passing steamers and the wash of the propellers," she said, together with the snorting and piunging of porpoises, are very distracting."
 Cry of Alarm
 The English girl fs not, however, to have 1t entirely her own way about sports, even if there are a million of her barred from matrimony by lack of enough men to go around. The press has set up cry of alarm. and there has been formed a special in- vestigating committee, representing the British Medical association, the Royal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians, the British Medical wom- ems Association. and ''the most em- fnent representatives of the teaching profession in all It's ramifications" That inc IT {r vi u,itN no little apprehension is indicated by the statements of officials of this committee. One of them. Mir George Chalmers. won headline the other day when he declared English wom- en as race are heading straight for sex extinction unless there are speedy and Fundamental changes in the pre- vailfng system of physical education for the modern girl"
 ! Queries are being made into the effect upon adolescent girls of drills and games. Statistics are being gathered from physicians and hos pistals as to the sterility of the sporting types of women" it Is said that the medical profession has long had misgivings. and distinguished practitioners are quoted as stating that strenuous games impair the functions of motherhood in playing them women "spend all their capital' with the consequence that they are productins ?, an "emasculated race of
 This Is not all. The tendency of the present system of training is to de- velop the masculine clement latent in every woman so that i've shall soon have species of human being who is neither man nor woman"
 The alarm Is not 50 big as the headlines; but there Is to be a~ earnest study of the whole question which should add somewhat to the worlds supply of statistical wisdom But if 1t is thought the findings war rant barring young women from the strenuous (and more Interestingly sports the next task will be to con vince them that they arc barred Once you've seen an English girl jump off fast bus on Regent Street with out dropping q hairpin. you know that won't be the easiest task. As for the superfluous million. 1t would seem rather pointless to warn them of sterility.