The Cruise of the Branwen

THE GAMES IN ATHENS and in the evening the Acropolis was brilliantly illuminated. On the Monday King Edward and the Prince of Wales visited the special building near the stadium in which the preliminary rounds of fencing took place, and both shook hands with Edgar Seligman and cornplimented him on secur– ing a place in the final of the foil competition after a brilliant display in the earlier rounds, in which he was only beaten by Dillon-Kavanagh, the celebrated French fieurettiste. He did not go further in the competition, being anxious to keep fresh for the more important task of the team fights that were coming. As a matter of fact, the foil is not a weapon at all, and is wholly unsuitable for scoring hits in a competition. It is the instrument of perhaps the most graceful and courteous form of athletic exercise in the world, and its whole spirit is destroyed by mere combativeness. The British Council did well to enact, in the Games of 1908, that the foil should be limited to a display, called an assaut d' honneur, in which two picked representatives of every nation should show their best form without attempting to score points at all. Of the other English athletes, Bouffler, of the Polytechnic, also distinguished himself by getting into the final of the bicycle race. On Tuesday morning the fencing ground became the centre of the most brilliant gathering of the day. Punctually at eleven the King and Queen of Greece and their sons, the King and Queen of England, with the Prince and Princess E 65