SPORTS AND GAMES 447 



in matches between English and French clubs, and in the performances of French teams 

 in the international cross country championships. French lawn-tennis players are 

 capable of holding their own with All England champions on grass courts, and on hard 

 courts have the advantage. But it is especially in Rugby football that the new French 

 athletic spirit is most impressively declared. A priori no game seemed less likely to 

 become acclimatised on the French side of the English Channel. A few years back, 

 when the Parisian clubs, Stade Francais and Racing Club de France, took up this form 

 of football, the deficiency of school training, the want of personal dexterity, and the 

 apparent ineptitude of the players for concerted play were the most obvious features 

 of their matches. A sufficiency of courage and something more than a sufficiency of 

 combativeness did not seem to hold out great promise for the future. Nowadays, 

 Rugby football is popular throughout the country, and the Southern towns, Bordeaux, 

 Nantes, Bayonne, Toulouse, Tarbes and Lyons, possess very strong clubs, backed 

 by a local enthusiasm which is indicated by the large crowds of spectators at their 

 matches. English club fifteens even of the highest reputation no longer play French 

 teams in France with confident assurance of victory; international matches with the 

 picked teams of France are considered to require the full force at the Rugby Union's 

 disposal; a strong Scotland team has actually been defeated. In football is exemplified 

 the modern French earnestness, the striving towards efficiency, the consciousness of 

 the necessity for sustained national effort and sacrifice, that the present military phase 

 of development has produced. But further, the practice of the game has already 

 developed a genuine sporting love of it. Something like the old spirit of the knightly 

 tournament is now discernible in the play of French fifteens; the delight in a fierce 

 and headlong onset and the concentrated endeavour towards victory are now tempered 

 by an appreciation of the technique of the game. Accordingly the self-possession 

 and mutual reliance on which the concert of a team depends have been evolved, and 

 a game is more likely to be won when the whole sum of enjoyment is not staked on 

 victory. Probably the favour in which boxing is now regarded in France may be 

 attributed to the national change of temperament. The acceptance of professional 

 pugilism came about in spite of a fatal accident in the ring which might have been 

 expected to prejudice the sport in the eyes of the public. The ordinary Continental 

 European attitude towards boxing is such that no amateur contests were held at 

 Stockholm in 1912 because of a doubt as to their legality. Pugilism is now so attract- 

 tive that a sum of more than 100,000 francs has been produced in Paris at one of 

 Carpentier's matches. Boxing in the army and in amateur circles is also prospering 

 under the impetus of a popular taste which is perhaps now at its climax. 



Athletics or competitive running, jumping and throwing may be classified as 

 lying between ordinary ball games and gymnastics. The readiness with which the 

 athletic part of the Olympic programme was taken up by the Scandinavian nations 

 was due to their excellent gymnastic discipline, based on the methods of P. H. Ling. 1 

 This system, though it has made its way into all countries, is still cultivated more 

 extensively and in higher perfection in Sweden than elsewhere; but an excellent gym- 

 nastic drill of the same type is used in Italy. It is significant of the expression of 

 national feeling by the way of physical culture that the Bohemian Sokol societies, whose 

 object is to preserve Slav-nationalism, make a peculiar mass-drill the chief feature 

 of their meetings. Nothing was more striking in the results of the Olympic compe- 

 titions than the progress made in athletics by the Swedes and Finns, the latter ex- 

 celling especially in wrestling and feats of strength. The Swedish National Union, 

 subsidised by the state, is a great federation of clubs, having for its aim the enlisting 

 of all adult citizens in an athletic discipline. Swedish citizens are encouraged to qual- 

 ify for bronze, silver and gold badges by passing tests in five groups of exercises, which 

 include jumping, running, swimming, fencing, weight, discus and javelin throwing, 

 bicycling, skating and ski-running. There is no other country in which so near an 

 approach is made to the old Spartan regimen. Hockey, football and lawn tennis are 



'See.E. B. xvi, 728. 



