The Cruise of the Branwen

PREFACE English photographers who sent out their repre– sentative specially to the Athenian Games. During our stay in Athens it became known that the Italians would be obliged to postpone the celebration of the official Olympic Games of 1908 in Rome, and the suggestion with which the Crown Prince of Greece was : fully in sympathy was made to Lord Desborough that they should be held in London. Immediately on our return from Athens the British Olympic Council began that long and complicated task of organisation which is now approaching its completion. I have therefore ventured to think that a slight sketch of the origin and scope of the movement resulting in the Games of London might be of interest at the present time, if it were prefixed to an account of what happened at the somewhat similar international gathering arranged in the unofficial and inde– pendent cycle of which the Athenian Games of 1906 were so brilliant an example. There will be Games again in Athens in 1910, with which no doubt the British Olympic Association will once more concern itself, so there seemed a double reason for putting on record as much as can be considered permanently valuable in the proceed– ings of I 906 in Greece. It must be remembered that in England the organisation of the Olympic Games is left with– out any official assistance of any sort or kind. In order, therefore, to fulfil the expectations of an excellence sufficiently high to form a permanent and universal standard which are courteously Vlll