THE VISION SPLENDID

In his article on International sport, Captain Percy Redfern Creed has expressed in words the unarticulated and perhaps unconscious theory behind every enterprise which brings different nationalities together on the athletic field. He has gone even further, by proposing to create from sport the cement with which the war-torn peoples of the world may again be bound together in mutual respect and confidence.

Taken as a whole, the idea is one which staggers the imagination both by its simplicity and by its brilliant possibilities. But like most sudden visions, if draws in its wake a host of practical obstacles which may very well prevent its ultimate fulfillment. Captain Creed has outlined a scheme of enormous potentialities, but he has left to those who follow after the monumental labor of arranging the details; and many of these already shadow forth the suggestion that they will present difficulties of mountainous proportions. It is even conceivable that the principle itself will miscarry; the occasions on which intensified athletic relations have resulted in bitterness and estrangement are-quite as numerous as those which have been responsible for increased respect and admiration.

If the theory is practicable, however, Captain Creed has at least made an excellent beginning, in attempting to further mutual understanding on the part of Great Britain and the United States. If world affairs are to be set in anything like proper order in the near future, a prerequisite is Anglo-American co-operation. The chances that this can be brought about through international sport are far greater between two countries whose national psychology and standards of judgment are so closely related, than between peoples whose points of similarity and consequent opportunities for sympathetic appreciation are less numerous and more fundamentally limited.