THE OLYMPIC GAMES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19234, 26 July 1924, Page 8

THE OLYMPIC GAMES.

The organisers of the Olympic Games were said some months ago' to be searching for a plan by means of which such meetings of the world's athletes might he invested with a greater sense of the heroic. The extent of their achievement of the end that was desired has been disappointing. Apparently the atmosphere of the contests at Paris this month has been unsatisfactory. The tone of the gathering w£is lowered b 7 a series of incidents of am unedifying kind, and the climax, it is recorded, was reached in the final stage of the boxing competitions, when there were, occurrences of a kind that could only bring the Olympic Games into disrepute. For this reason seve-, ral British newspapers, and some of the French newspapers as well, have expressed the view that the Olympic Games do more harm than good in the field of international relations owing to the intrusion of the f elements of bad sportsmanship and racial animosity. The Times, which has re-established its old claim to bo regarded as a judicial arbiter, asserts that the Olympiad has been weighed in the balance and found not only wanting, hut positively danger* ous. It hazards, moreover, the prediction that its death knell has been sounded. We may take it that' the Olympic Association will at least have some difficulty in averting the fulfilment of this prophecy. The experience of the association suggests that the world has not yet reached a plane upon which elaborately organised athletic contests cf an international character may be conducted with advantage. The unpleasantness which disfigured the recent games has apologetically been ascribed; to the excitable Latin temperament, bub it may be suggested thab it is necessary to consider another possible explanation. The traditions relative to sport enjoyed and honoured by the AngloSaxon peoples have no counterpart ia most of the nations which have been represented at the Olympiad, nor has the public sense of sportsmanship been, developed in these nations. In any case, tlie abandonment of the Olympic Games, should it come to that, would be no great misfortune. These contests have always seemed at once to glorify athleticism beyond reason and to attach to it a competitive element of a kind that is not worth fostering. They have tended to encourage an absurd expendi-i ture of time, energy, and money toa doubtful purpose.