Olympic Games and the Duke of Westminster's appeal for £100,000

AIMS and
O
,:*EJE
C
TS
of the
OLYMPIC GAMES FUND.
I.—HISTORY OF THE GAMES.
The credit of having originated the modern
Olympic Games belongs to Baron Pierre de
Coubertin. He had been much attracted by the
way in which games were played and taught in
English public schools and by the general devotion
to sport of the British people, as shown in . the
popularity and the high standard of such events as
Henley Regatta and the inter-University Boat
Race. He had for many years taken an active
part in encouraging the practice of athletics in
France and in arousing public attention to the
need of the better physical education of French
youths. At what date he first conceived the idea
of reviving the Olympic Games we do not know;
but it was in November, 1892, at a meeting of the
" Union des Sports Athle'tiques " at the Sorbonne,
that he first gave public utterance to his ambition
and appealed to his hearers for support in the
" splendid and beneficent " task of reconstituting on
a
larger international scale the old Hellenic festival.
Two years later, in 1894, an International Con-
gress of Sport was summoned to meet in Paris.
Before the meeting of the congress M. de Couber-
tin visited England, where the Prince of Wales,
afterwards King Edward VII., gave his approval
to the project. It also received support from the
highest quarters in France, Belgium, Sweden,
Greece, and other countries. The proceedings of
the congress were marked by great enthusiasm.
The International Olympic Committee was organ-
ized, and Greece, as was fitting, undertook to
hold the first of the new Games in Athens in 1896.
The Games of 1896, in Athens, were followed by
those of 1900 in Paris and of 1904 in the United
States, at St. Louis. At a meeting of the Inter-
national Olympic Committee, held in London in
the last-named year, it had been proposed that the
Games of 1908 should be celebrated in Rome.
In May, 1905, a meeting was held in the House of
Commons at which a British Olympic Association
was formed, and Mr.
W.
H. Grenfell, M.P. (now
Lord Desborough), was elected chairman. In the
following year the Italian Committee found that it
would not be practicable to have the Games in
Rome in 1908 ; and at a meeting of the Interna-
tional Committee in Athens Lord Desborough was
asked whether it could be arranged to hold them in
London.. On his return Lord Desborough con-
sulted the various athletic associations in this
country. He found them entirely favourable to the
idea. Time was short, but the British Olympic
Council was immediately organized, consisting of
one representative from the governing body in
each branch of sport, and by energy and with the
happy collaboration of the management of the
Franco-British Exposition, arrangements for hold-
ing which at Shepherd's-bush were already under
way, the Games of 1908 were successfully carried
through in London on a much larger scale than had
before been attempted. The Games of 1912
took place in Stockholm, and those of 1916 are
destined for Berlin.
Before closing this very brief historical sketch
(for many of the facts in which the writer is in-
debted to " The Fourth Olympiad," or the official
report of the Olympic Games of 1908, prepared by
Mr. Theodore A. Cook) it should be explained that
an intermediate series of Games, also quadrennial,
is held in Athens, the first of which took place in
1906 and the second in 1910. The third celebra-
tion will occur in 1914. Owing to the great
munificence of M. Averoff. of Alexandria, the old
Athenian Stadium has been sumptuously recon-
structed in white marble. There was some sugges-
tion that it should be used as the permanent home
of the Olympic Games themselves. It was feared,
however, that if that were done the Games would
lose much of their international character and
tend to become merely local. So the series of
Athenian Games was instituted, falling midway
between the celebrations of the Olympic Games
proper.
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