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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



KNUCKLES DOWN ! 



Photograph by Harry F. Blanchard 



youth reduced stone-throwing to a fine 

 art, and in winter made use of snowballs 

 on fete days. In Perugia as many as 

 2,000 would engage in this game. Defen- 

 sive armor was worn, but many fatalities 

 resulted. Mothers and wives protested, 

 it is safe to assume ; but there, as in 

 Sparta, heed to feminine counsels was 

 held to be unmanly. 



Old English statutes furnish evidence 

 of the encouragement of archery, and 

 the reason therefor may be found in 

 the fact that the Battle of Hastings saw 

 the Saxons panic-stricken at the effective 

 use of the longbow by the Normans, al- 

 though later, at Poitiers and Agincourt, 

 Englishmen won lasting fame by their 

 employment of that weapon. 



Charlemagne sought to popularize ar- 

 chery ; Edward III forbade all other 

 sports on holidays and Sundays, thus 

 making the pastime subserve universal 

 military training. 



BY THEIR PLAY YE SHALL KNOW THEM 



It almost seems as if by a people's 

 sports you shall know them. Taine 

 thought literature was a sure criterion. 

 But literature is not always precisely 



expressive, because it may become over- 

 self conscious under the influence of a 

 Dryden; or it may bend to winds of 

 fashion, driving a Shaw to preach soci- 

 ology in plays and a Browning to teach 

 philosophy in verse ; and nearly always 

 it seeks out the exceptional, sometimes 

 focusing a people all awry, as if heroic 

 France were to be adjudged through 

 some of her erotic fiction. 



Play is more spontaneous. There is a 

 wealth of suggestion in the fact that bull- 

 fighting in its most cruel form was an ob- 

 session in the years when the Council of 

 Blood was making revolting sport of hu- 

 man life in the Netherlands. Charles V, 

 by no means a robust monarch, felt called 

 upon to celebrate the birth of his son, 

 Philip II, by slaying a bull. It was that 

 same son who sent the Duke of Alva 

 upon his barbarous mission to the North 

 Country. 



One could all but write the history of 

 classic Greece from a knowledge of its 

 games, and tell something of its philos- 

 ophy, too. Plato, in our time, while not 

 engaged on a Chautauqua circuit, would 

 be urging municipal playgrounds and 

 swimming pools. 



