FOOTBALL AIDS AMITY OF NATIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 137, 6 December 1935, Page 8

FOOTBALL AIDS AMITY OF NATIONS

The German football eleven, with their host of supporters, have t been to London and gone;, the. international match with England was played and lost—and nothing untoward has happened. The fears of the Trades Union Congress that the occasion might be used for Nazi propaganda on a large scale were shown by events to have been entirely unjustified. In fact the visit of the Germans from* every point of view turned out a huge success. If the visitors were disappointed in the result of the match, they took thenbeating in the best of sporting spirit. "It was a grand game," said the manager, Dr. Nerz, after the match. "We are satisfied we were beaten by a belter side than ours." Then there was his tribute to the impartiality of the spectators in their appreciation of good play. "They were as quick (o cheer us as they were their own men." There is nothing

of the Swastika about this, nor was the emblem visible at any oilier time. Instead there was the "gigantic laurel wreath, requiring three men lo carry it," which the visitors placed on the Cenotaph: "In memory of the British dead, from German football supporters." It was the War more than anything else that impressed the Germans with the British love of games and a realisation of their virtues. .The football the Londoners dribbled from the trenches over "No Man's Land" at Loos in 1915 thus comes back to Britain in a friendly invasion twenty years later. Sir Walter Citrine, replying to the charge that the Trades Union Congress is perverting football into politics, says that football is part of the Nazi regime. Of course, it is, just as the Nazi regime represents Germany and as the All 'Blacks in Britain represent New Zealand. How football has taken Germany by storm is well described in an article in this issue.' If Herr Hitler gave the German team his blessing on its departure and.had the result telephoned to him from London it is no more than the different Governments in New Zealand since Seddon have done whenever the All Blacks have sallied forth on their Empire missions. The value of sport in promoting good will between nations was never better demonstrated than by this admir-ably-organised and conducted visit of the German footballers to the land of a former foe.