Show P or dt f A A S 11 persian wrestlers Wrest lers prepare Pre b by the national geoga a ahlo society washington D C ACH recurrence of the olympic E EACH games shows allows a growth of tile the play spirit among the natio no and a greater recognition of tile the value of games as a training for life games played a big part tn in maintaining tile the morale alike of civilians and soldiers sold lora during the world war and from this experience has come a renewed realization that the sinews sliewa that win wars are just as needful for the vigorous bloodless battles of peace back home before beford the war Arli america erica had co contributed t two wa now new thing 9 to sport baseball and ad the city playground it has been noted that sports of a nation afford an almost invariable barometer of its progress in cIvIll civilization za baseball Is one of the most co complicated and highly organized pastimes known to any people it Is a veritable instrument of the most delicate precision in the world of A south sea islander no more could play it than he could operate a linotype machine or deftly handle the paper money in a b tellers tel lere elge cige yet the instincts baseball satisfies the zest of racing to a goal aheard of the ball the deep satisfaction of diverting a swiftly moving object to serve his own ends the mere impact of the speeding sp speriere eliere against the instrument he controls bagging the spheroid as ad it lies afield the suspense of nine men as they await tile the batters fate each ach and all find their counterpart in play as old as animals that walk on two jeet beet and h ve enough gray matter atop their spinal columns to control natures laws tor for their human purposes the foot race ever was the most popular of the 24 Olymp olympian lan events the romans batted balls with alth the forearm swathed with bandages and the gilbert islanders wrap coconut shells with cord card so they will wild rebound to a blow from the open palm homers hamers princess of la Is represented in the odyssey as jumping to catch a ball tossed by her molds of honor and the chinese had bad a game in which a suspended ball was kept hurtling to and fro by blows from the players america has been among the leaders in her attention to childrens playgrounds in fact playgrounds for children may be considered the distinctive contribution of tills this country to the worlds play playgrounds in cities to gather statistics of play Is like counting the finds F of the sea or the children of the nation but it Is sig cant of tile the awakening interest in playa play to note that even by 1018 more than cl cities ties maintained nearly playgrounds and tile the children who found relaxation on of these playgrounds frow from which reports were had on any one day would have numbered scarcely less than the total pupula copula tion of boston each year since has seen an increase both in the cities having playgrounds and in the total of play spaces moreover tills this le la but bat a traction fraction of the opportunities for normal play for it does not tuk tak into account tile the thousands of boys clubs and provisions for their special clientele which churche church e parishes private privy te and organizations like the die Y M C A boy scouts knights of columbus and numerous others mahke otte one of the most characteristic adjuncts of the american school city tuan or country district Is its playground and few ew aret are f city parks where the old keep off the grazes grass signs have not been superseded oy invitations to play and special provisions for games for one who would study the derivation of games the average playground no DO matter how bow crude la Is a veritable museum of archaeology archeology archeo arche logy tools and we weapon apoe of one aal frequently become the playthings of tile tie next and centuries later when adults have deserted the foort children adopt it game hunting marked an important development tn in the life of primitive rams races the indian who stalked deer the black man who tracked snakes the ank cd cavage who hunted the rhinoceros stinted snared wild birds at their drinking places and trapped the tiger were not out for a summers sport ingenuity in hunting methods of hunting were exceedingly primitive at first but some tribes early developed an amazing technique ane tn eili eskimo inin would wrap himself in skins and lie ile ly by the hour alongside an lec hold to a sell seal the tarah mares carca 0 of felled trees by the me I 1 score to get squirrel occasionally caught as the trees fell more ingenious were the ans wh i would clear a forest oasis by bur burning nang wait for the grasses grassed to grow and attract animals and they would set gre fire to a barricade of brush they arranged in the meantime ath exits near ahiel they would take their stand and spear the frightened animals as aa they sought to escape some african tribesmen camouflaged their spear heads with bird feathe Fue glans 8 attained a low visibility by daubing themselves with ettli mud and clay florida indians donned skin and horns of deer to enable them to approach their prey ways of setting traps for animals and of poisoning spears were known kiowa thousands of years before christ the tha sportsmanlike greeks shrank chran k from use of poisoned darts in n warfare for the same reason that they regarded arch cry its as a savage practice in combat even in war ahm declined to uso use instruments st which would give one side eldo an unfair advantage it was long before the horse ridden so skillfully tilly by the arab and the tha moor became either a beast of burden or mans anns plaything at the races and whatever the civilized opinion of oc bull that sport la Is a for far cry from either the combat to death of human beings or the lack sport diversion of watching two animals tear each other to pieces tile the spaniard will defend ills his national pastime by citing thit that the ma runs a fur flir grouter greater risk than the hunter of the biggest geme with the advant vio of his firearms norse horse Is another sport that dates back to remote probably the french were the pioneers in turf sport ns as practiced in modern tithes times but it was natural that tile the english with their love of outdoors outdo ora and of animals should have cultivated the tha horse for the they did thedoe the 60 for the hunt james I 1 seems to have bay been the first royal patron of rac racing Inge boxing and wrestling boxing and wrestling are the more humanized forn forms of individual contests of strength naturally the tha program of 0 lie original olympic games veritable encyclopedias of ancient sports included boxing and wrestling moreover the greeks had one game the Dan pancrace crace which combined both wrestling at least Is much older thau uriece as indicated by the bouts bouta pictured on tombs along the nile in greece boang boxing fell into disfavor in sparta for an unusual rea reason sofi the greeks had developed sportsmanlike rules for the game eliminating kicking biting and ear pulling and the alie bout out closed when one ene boxer at bitted ills his defeat lycargus held it improper for any spartan to acknowledge defeat even in a game I 1 the japanese have been devoted to both sports for ages fukune hack flack en schmidt of Nippo nIn the days when jolin john was foretelling the lie coming of 0 christ was delfied dei fied and from wrestling jul jui jitsu evolved boxing today la Is extremely popular throughout the tha empire jack broughton english father ot of boxing as it ls Is practiced today la is believed to have invented the modern boxing glove and the division tuto luto rounds but he scorned to train in order to meet a bu butcher named slack who belled belld tile hir name with a blow like a cleaver and put the idol of british sport dom dorn to in the ex cx champeon champlon class A writer of the sixteenth century called football a devilish pastime end and charged lt it with Inciting envy and sometimes brawling murder and homicide nevertheless by the time of charles 11 II football had become firmly established at cambridge it wai wa ever held in high in ireland there when al all other lother sports were prohibited for ar cherys sake onely the great foot foo bylle was exempt women joined with the men tn in playing it on shrove tuesdays sn man participated that few tha tbt whereabouts of the hall an expedient which not dot so eo long ago aroused a furore in the american sporting world was adopted by a player who shook out the shavings with which the balls of those days were stuffed and carried it under his bla shirt to the goal abandoned as a general mastim because of its roughness it was retained in colleges until with the past half century it sprang into renewed ln in greatly modified forto form the british carried football into jerusalem when they recovered tho thi sacred city missionaries have taught it to heathen tribes |