The Cruise of the Branwen

THE WREATH OF OLIVE It is obvious, of course, that some victories are worth more than others. But so much has been said about the " failure " of the British athletes that it may be well to point out the price the Americans had to pay for specialising in the stadium events. Their successes were very great, and they thoroughly deserved them ; but outside " track athletics," in the stricter sense, they did, very little. So that, if we take the whole of the seventy-two events mentioned in the card, we get the somewhat curious result that neither the British nor the American athletes did best all round. That distinction, it is instructive to observe, must go to our friends the French, who won the pole jump, gymnastic pentathlon, 84 kilometres bicycle race, foils, epee, epee team contest, duelling-pistols, Gras rifle (200 ms.), any revolver (25 ms.), the singles, mixed, and men's doubles in lawn tennis, and the canoeing; while their second prizes were the gymnastic hexathlon, 84- kilometres bicycle race, tennis singles, 20 kilometres bicycle, fours with cox. (2000 ms), epee, canoeing, any revolver (25 ms.), and revolver at 50 metres. Scoring five for each of their thirteen first prizes and three for each of their nine seconds (as is usual in America), this gives them a total of 92 points. To this the British athletes take second place with a total of 78 for nine firsts, viz., the five miles, Marathon Race, high jump, hop-skip-and-jump, 1600 metres swimming, both clay-pigeon matches, and the zo kilometres and 2000 metres tandem bicycle races ; their eleven seconds being made up of the 89