KAISER'S NEW TEMPLE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 13138, 26 July 1913, Page 10

KAISER'S NEW TEMPLE.

"A SUPER-STADIUM FOR SUPER- 1 GERMANS." ' J IMPRESSIVE DEDICATION.. ■ BERLIN, June 9, "The parade, the pageant of a new athletic era, which to-day drew Berlin to the dedicatibn by the Kaiser of the Stadium at Grunewald, which will be used for the Olympic Games in 1916, was "essentially unlike most parades. It was as full of purpose and meaning as it was vast and various. Tho building, as solid as Germans can make it, permanent, hewn out of, the ground, was dedicated with almost rcligious fervor and military pomp. Over 30,000 athletes, men, women, and c-hii-dven, without pause or hitch, paraded; ran, played games., and performed. They represented nearly 3,000,000 German athletes, and they performed before the Kaiser and a great crowd of members of skating, hockey, running, swimming, and other clubs. They even out-num-bered the spectators, as if to prove that .Germany, at any rate, was not a nation of. vicarious athletes. ■ Nothing approaching the spectacle was seen at the last Olympic Games themselves even in respect of athletic physique. The German nation has bcicomo athletic through and through, and means .to prove it. : The Kaiser himself, on the eve of his jubilee, intends to found a new athletic ,era" for Germans. The new stadium which he opened is to be the temple .of the new' cult. It is a super-Stadium for super-Germans, who are to be trained into a physical perfection superior to that, of Frederick the Great s bodyguard, and these "Kaiser's" athletes are to serve the national cause like soldiers. The . brief speech of General Count von .Ppdbielski in opening the Stadium temple df a new physical religion was prepared as carefully as if it were to be .permanently engraved on a national monument. ' "A theatre has been provided for the contests of peace, dedicated to the development of physical strength, to the steeling of the w'll power, to the fostering of patriotism." What He said the German nation means. The Kaiser and the Government are co-operating with other organisers, and .presently little stadiums or apparatus lor training in gymnastics, swimming, .running, and games will tempt tho population , to athletics all over the German' Empire. ■." FLIGHT OF 10,000 PIGEONS. . Symbols, pictures, and poetry wre requisitioned to instil the speech into £h$ German imagination directly it was from the. pulpit in front of the' Kaiser's box. Ten thousand pigeons each". "carry iitig. a little paper roll of ,the .speech,, were loosed. They looked like a snow flurry, as they dashed up arid almost obscured a military aeroplane ! which,. dracori-like, circled above the Sl^d|um. They carried the message in 'place of ' the telegraphs, locally closed .otji. Sunday. The speech was also offixiklly translated into all tongues, that ;tKe> world may understand what Germany means by employing athletes in the cause, of will power, muscle and patriblism. This parade, to which the student athletic, societies with their .flags gave a final note of color and dash, was watched 1 by the representatives of most countries. . The Duke of Somerset, who 'is to preside at the crucial Olympic meeting on Wednesday in London, journeyed over especially. He can hardly Have helped contrasting the physique and precision of these 30,000 Germans with the slovenly shuffle of the indifferent band of presumably picked British athletes at Stockholm, butr the difference lies only in the organisation, for which the British Olympic Council is Responsible. The Germans have already everything complete, even to the making! of the greatest athletic arena in the .world, arid nave stirred the whole population to eager co-operation. Our crganisatioh has an acutely disinterested public, and has produced no scheme. T?he Germans will be as good as the 'Swedes and Americans in 1916. Even wiien they lose, their effort will evoke admiration for its thoroughness arid' pluck. Such is my belief after seeing the; parade and hearing the German plans. The German physique is still, perhaps* too heavy for perfection^ Some 'things were absurd. Tho exaggerated goose-step of the - small boy's, the ample laurel wreaths on the brows of the pick-" ed athletes, and the half-military, halfgymnastic scaling of sjiam -amparts were like a parody of both war and .gymnastics. But in 1916 we shall appear and be held ludicrously^ inferior in athletics and sport if we do not organise and,* with 'special emphasis, prepare our competitors for the games in this solid and colossal temple of athletics in the greenwood outside Berlin.