Vol. XXXVI, No. 2 WASHINGTON 



August, 1919 



t: 



NAT 



PfflC 



COPYRIGHT. 1919. BY 



VTIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY. WASHINGTON. D. C. 



THE GEOGRAPHY OF GAMES 



How the Sports of Nations Form a Gazetteer of the 

 Habits and Histories of Their Peoples 



BY J. R. HlLDEBRAND 



A CURIOUS paradox: the maddest 

 Avar men ever fought has had a 

 tendency to turn the world to 

 simple, wholesome play. 



Your Englishman no longer makes 

 excuse for the time he spent at the bat 

 or in the saddle. Centuries of cricket, 

 tennis, and riding to the hounds forti- 

 fied his home land in time of terrible 

 stress. Some five million Americans, 

 many of them snatched from desk and 

 counter, are pouring back, having sensed 

 the tang of open sky and outdoors while 

 playing their games, football to ping- 

 pong, behind the lines, as they waited 

 to get into the biggest game of all. 



And other men from every clime — 

 black, yellow, and tan — carry home the 

 games they saw these sturdy Britishers 

 and wiry Americans playing. The 

 French played, too— played in a way 

 peculiarly expressive of their national 

 temperament. 



GAMES A KEY TO GEOGRAPHY 



Note the reverse of the picture. Ger- 

 many, with clanking armor and un- 

 sheathed sword, gone stale from over- 

 training for the fight she picked, may 

 find in her neglect of play one reason 

 for a colossal failure at arms and her 

 maladroit diplomacy. 



Sports and games ever were magic 

 touchstones to geography and to those 

 allied sciences which provide the surest 

 clues to how peoples live, and work, 

 and think. 



In countless ways science has learned 

 about climates, and products, and cus- 

 toms, and peoples of the past from toys, 

 games, and sports. An entire new field 

 of investigation was opened by the dis- 

 covery that backgammon, as played in 

 Burma, also was known to the pre- 

 Columbian Mexicans. 



A new light is shed on an ancient 

 civilization when we learn that there 

 was a law among the Persians by which 

 all children were to be taught three 

 things : horsemanship, shooting with the 

 bow, and telling the truth. 



Carthaginians and Phoenicians owed 

 something of their maritime glory to a 

 love of swimming, the sport by which 

 they first mastered their fear of the sea. 

 One wonders whether the more rapid 

 strides made in England toward the 

 political emancipation of women may 

 not be traceable to the ardor of British 

 women for outdoor exercise and sports. 



Equally significant in the history of 

 nations is the decline of their sports. 

 While the Persians observed the rigid 

 regimen of the chase, as prescribed by 



