Olympic Cavalcade

OLYMPIC CAVALCADE champions as she might have been, and it is equally true that the victorious Americans were not as modest as they should have been." I have, and I shall continue to treat this state of things perfectly openly and fairly, because I think that absolute fairness and complete candour are the most certain ways of destroying the completely inaccurate idea that the Olympic Games do more harm than good, and are apt to be more productive of strife than to induce peace and amity among the nations. - Gradually, moreover, the Games were becoming stabilized. In the past the number of competitors which mighfr~present a nation had been uncon– trolled and some people came at their own expense. But now Great Britain and all other countries each ~ad an Olympic Committee of it.s own. Each Committee was .responsible for the Tearn representing its own country. These Committees forwarded entrie$ to the British Olympic Committee and individuarentries were not ac<;:ept~d. The athletic, burnot the general programme, moreover, looked like becoming stabilized. A.t the London Olympic Games some 19 nations were represented by 900 competitors. It is not suggested that the form of an Olympic Festival was -as yet stabilized. Paris and St. Louis, perhaps, produced more varied programmes, but the British did attempt to produce something concrete af!d comprehensive. Quite possibly all of the sports included did not entirely please our visitors from overseas, and there had been some erring in the direction of including recreations which in tFie past had been largely a British preserve. But the fact must be remembered that wlien Baron de Coubertin was working out the OlympiC scheme it was· to England that he came in the first place to study our metfiods. - Wherefore one supposes that it appeared in no way unreasonable to the British Olympic Committee of those days to approve a list of contests to be competed in at the Games_in the following branches of sport: Archery, Athletics, Boxing, Cycling, Fencing, FootBall, Gynmastics, Hockey, Lacrosse, Lawn Tennis, Motor Boats,_Polo, Rackets, Rowing, Shooting, Skating, Swimming, Tennis (feu cle P aume ), Wrestling and Yachting. It may be that some · of. those pas~times were too co_mplicated or too parochially English for the Continental nations, who, so far 1 were mainly 'athletic', but de Coubertin's original thesis had been in his own words: "T..he real free trade ofthe Ju.ture will be to send our athletes ofall kinds to all countries where games are played in order that they may study the methods practised by the greates:t exponents ofthe various arts." That, I contend, 1.s what th~ British Olympic ~ommittee of 1908 set out to show, and if our planners and organizers failed in some respects we were all very young in those days, no heads_were broken and pe-rhaps we have become the befter friends all roun_d, by very reason of·our far.-off and long-forgotten bickerings. One thing is quite certain: it- is that out of our · petty differences in the past, plus our mutUal comradeship jn two world wars, there has grown an admiration, a liking and a degree of respect between