The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1929. SPORT AND NATIONALITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 200, 24 August 1929, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1929. SPORT AND NATIONALITY.

For the etutte that lack* aetistance, Fpr the wrong that needs resistance, for the future in the distance, And the good that ve eon d%

After the modern revival of the Olympic Games in 1596. a great many nations began to pay serious attention to athletics and the many complex problems connected therewith, and the result has been that Britain's old-time supremacy in many fields and forms of sport has been most effectively challenged by her foreign rivals. Since the war, moreover, the need for national reconstruction everywhere seems to have brought home to many nations more impressively than before the importance of the part played by athletics in building up national character and national life, viLu the effect of stimulating a keener and more practical interest in athletic affairs not only among the rank and file of the populace, but in the minds of statesmen and rulers as well.

Not even in Britain, or America or Australia are athletics taken so seriously to-day as in Italy or Germany, and (he systematic development o£ sport as a national occupation is now in these countries a recognised function of the State. In Italy, under the direction and patronage of Mussolini himself, athletic sport of every conceivable type is publicly advocated, not as "an aimless pastime" or "an empty spectacle/ , but as "a school of will-power -which prepares for Fascism the conscious citizens of peace, the heroic soldiers of war." And in Germany sport "not for the fun of the thing, but as a means to an end," is now regarded as so important a factor in the educational curriculum that it has obtained State recognition in a High School for Athletics established at Berlin.

Under such auspices the progress of athletics in these countries has been rapid and impressive. To take the case of Italy first: Long before the war Italians had given ample proof of their fine athletic qualities. In mountaineering, fencing and cycling, riding and ski-ing, the Italians have long excelled. Mussolini is an ardent horseman and fencer; his right-hand man, Turati, is said to be one of the best swordsmen in Italy, and General Balbo is a fearless aviator. Italian Soccer teams have beaten British professional teams, and when Rugby football was introduced at Rome last year great pains -were taken to gather large crowds of spectators and to explain to them officially by "loud speakers" the fine points of the game. In the Davis Cup matches last year the Italian team beat in succession Rumania, Australia, Czecho-Slovakia and Britain, and only lost narrowly to the Americans.; ,In every form of athletic sport and skill the Italians appear to be able to reach the highest level of excellence. And now that the Duce, the real ruler of Italy, has impressed upon his people the necessity for practising athletics as a national duty, we may expect important results to follow.

In Germany, in the same way, sport taken up first for physical training, is now encouraged and inculcated as a preparation for more efficient national life. In recent years the Germans have achieved remarkable success in gymnastics, boxing and running, in swimming, rowing, lawn tennis and "Soccer," and the diploma of "Sports and Gymnastic Teacher" issued by the Berlin High School is one of the most coveted of educational qualifications. Of course, the German methods of "training are largely scientific and mechanical, and breathing tests and reaction time tests are common features of their curriculum. But their thoroughness shows how seriously they take their sport, and the threat that if. Germany gained first place at the Olympic Games in 1928 she would at once demand revision of the Treaty and the restoration of her colonies had quite a serious side. Yet in spite of -the admirable spirit in which Italy and Germany have attacked this problem of athletics as a factor in national life since the war, we may still ask if in the long run the old-fashioned British way of playing games "for sport's sake' , does not on the whole produce finer results.