Rules of sport

PREFACE
V
ERY
few words of introduction are needed to a Code of
Rules which will at once recommend themselves to every
lover of sport all over the world. Two things, however,
are especiall noticeable with regard to this publication.
It is therst book which contains the rules for twenty
different sports which have been agreed to by twenty
different nations.
It is the first code ever made for the purposes of
extended international competition by a council composed
of the Presidents or Secretaries or specially appointed
members of every Association at the head of a first-rate
sport in the United Kingdom.
Its origin was, of course, the organisation of the Olympic
Games of 1908 in London by the British Olympic Council
of which I have had the honour to 'be a member since
1905, and it was begun immediately after the Conference
of the International Olympic Committee at The Hague in
1907, at which I was courteously permitted to be present.
At that Committee not merely the legislation, but, where
necessary, the entire judging of the Olympic Games of
1908 was placed in the hands of the British Olympic
Council who, of course, consulted. the wishes of their
foreign friends and colleagues as regards the details of the
programme and the rules here printed.
Though both the programme and the rules were
specially drawn up for the games of 1908, and bear (in
their omissions as well as their enactments) the mark of
that special origin, their value is, of course, a far more
deep and lasting one. No international athletic meeting
in the future can afford to disregard so authoritative and
complete a code, whether that meeting is confined to a
single form of sport or to a series of various competitions.
Not only, therefore, will this code form the ultimate
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