Kimberley "compound" system, illustrating the beneficial effects of the three months' isolation that the natives who work in the mines voluntarily undergo. For my scheme of six years' service under labour conscription may be claimed all these advantages of the "compound" system, and more. Three months is too short a time in which to acquire the habit of continuous toil, and the natives who go there are too old to learn the lesson easily. By labour conscription the young native lad would be protected from the ravages of the drink traffic. If it is a desideratum that there should be a decrease in the native population, and the Cape Agricultural Department favours it, then this would certainly be brought about by the sexes being kept apart until the young native men have passed the age of twenty-two. Another important factor is the standard of native wages that would be established by means of labour conscription. Nor would this scheme in any way interfere with the supply of labourers for the mines and farm-work. The farmer would always be able to secure 66 hands " from the natives who, in a constant stream, would have completed their term of conscription, and I do not hesitate to say the value of the labourers would be greater than in past years.

In the success of the great reform I advocate will be brought about the salvation of millions of fellow-men, the settlement of internal difficulties, the warding off of great dangers, the establishment of commercial prosperity, the strengthening of the State, and the illumination in brighter colours than heretofore of the blind Puritan's inspired utterance, "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.'

وو

C. USHER WILSON.

PIERRE DE COUBERTIN. AN APPRECIATION.

BARON PIERRE DE COUBERTIN needs no introduction to the readers of the FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, who have been for some time acquainted with his writing and his work. Still, they may be interested in knowing more of a career which, though still short (for he is not yet thirty-nine) has been extraordinarily full .Those who have read some of his books or his articles in the FORTNIGHTLY, know only one side of a life remarkable for its untiring activity in many and varied fields. We propose, then, to give a brief résumé of the writings and of the life-work of the man whom ten years ago M. Simeon Luce, the late much-valued member of the Institute, pronounced to be "one of the great Frenchmen of his time."

I.

The works of M. de Coubertin consist, at the present moment, of eleven volumes and an incalculable number of articles scattered through the Correspondant, the Revue de Paris, the Revue des deux Mondes, the Réforme Sociale, Cosmopolis, the Nouvelle Revue, Le Monde Moderne, the Journal des Débats, the Indépendance Belge, the Revue Bleue, the Figaro, the Century, the American Review of Reviews, the FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, the Deutsche Revue, to say nothing of purely occasional collaboration in smaller reviews and journals the number is endless. M. de Coubertin was also for two years, in 1890 and 1891, director of a monthly periodical, the Revue Athlétique. Since 1900 he founded three other publications of which he is the director. Two at least of these are supplied entirely from his pen. One, a volume of about two hundred and eighty pages, is called the Chronique de France; it is a sort of résumé of all the important events which have happened in France during the past year; it appears annually, and is sent to all the universities and great public libraries in the world. The innovation consists in a system of gratuitous distribution which is made according to lists very carefully drawn up so that no copy is thrown away, but placed where it has the greatest chance of being read. To the "Chronicle" is added a valuable "carnet bibliographique," containing the annual list of the books issued by the great publishing houses. These advertisements cover the expenses of publication, and allow of this free distribution. The idea is ingenious; and, as it proved a success, M. de Coubertin has applied the same principle to a small quarterly, the Revue Olympique, written in several languages and distributed

among all the great athletic societies throughout the world. This pamphlet is the organ of the International Olympic Committee, of which we shall speak later on. The third publication is the Revue du Pays de Caux, a magazine which appears six times a year, and is distributed in the same manner among the libraries, societies and associations of Normandy. Normandy is the land where M. de Coubertin was born, and to which, though he often spends his summers in Alsace, he remains loyally attached. The expenses of the Revue du Pays de Caux are also covered by the advertisements; there are no subscribers, but the success of the magazine has been such that the editor will probably be induced to publish it in the ordinary way.

The other works of M. de Coubertin consist of four volumes devoted to educational questions, a book of Souvenirs of America and Greece, an elaborate study of the Third Republic from 1870 to 1894 (there is an American edition of this work illustrated with portraits), and a volume entitled France since 1814, published in London by Chapman and Hall, which has never appeared in French.

It is very evident that with M. de Coubertin writing is merely the means and action the end. Everything he writes is, as a rule, subsidiary to some practical undertaking. His first scheme, begun at the age of twenty-three, was to introduce English methods of physical education into France, and thus to transform those lycées and colleges of which the organisation seemed to him defective to the last degree. He set about it in a somewhat curious manner, by rousing the pupils to a species of revolt. Feeling that he could get nothing out of either the masters or the parents, who were by no means convinced that physical exercise was necessary at all, and finding little fascination in the ordinary gymnastics, he induced the pupils in several schools to form athletic associations among themselves; and he himself taught them to play Rugby football. After a careful study of English games, he decided in favour of the one which he considered infinitely superior to the rest. Cricket and Association football, he used to say, are manly amusements, but only amusements. Rugby football is a lesson in manly science. Wherever the Rugby game is played, education is bound to advance of its own accord. The event has amply justified this view; and in spite of all obstacles, the last fifteen years have seen a prodigious progress in the poplarity of the game.

All the same, this result was only achieved by incessant efforts. M. de Coubertin foresaw resistance; he was aware that small associations of schoolboys, with neither power nor money to hack them, would be promptly put down by the combined hostility of

masters and parents. They needed support, and this support had to be provided from outside. So he created a vast organisation, the Union des Sports Athlétiques, which to-day numbers more than forty thousand members, and nearly four hundred societies. With it he incorporated both the men's clubs and the schoolboys' associations, taking care to head it with a vast committee of patronage, which included generals, politicians, and professors. He discreetly laid hands on the eminent busy people, too eminent and too busy to interfere with him. They thus lent their prestige to the Union without meddling with its business. For seven years M. de Coubertin directed this organisation, adjusting all the parts of the complex machinery, paralysing hostility, pressing into his service devoted collaborators from all quarters, rushing from one end of France to the other in order to preach to schoolboys the necessity of football, judiciously concealing the fact that what he was really trying to achieve by means of physical energy was a revival of that moral energy which he considered far more important. Indeed, he has subsequently maintained that in his opinion compulsory military service was quite sufficient to keep the muscles of the race in good order, but not to endow it with the initiative, audacity and enterprise which are indispensable if it is to play any leading part in the world. There is one, and only one, way of gaining these qualities, and that is to have played Rugby between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. It frequently happened that M. de Coubertin would in the same day deliver a lecture on the theory of football, and act as director or umpire in a match. It was also his idea to introduce other forms of athleticism, especially running matches. His most devoted collaborators in this were M. Godart, principal of the École Monge, and the famous Père Didon, principal of the Collège d'Arcueil. M. Bonvalot, the explorer, the Vicomte de Janzé, President of the Lawn Tennis Clubs, the late M. Jules Simon, and M. Jusserand, to-day French Ambassador in Washington, were strong allies. In reply to some official enquiries since made by the Chamber of Deputies as to the reforms most desirable in education, M. de Coubertin declared that the opposition he had met with from the University authorities was simply incredible. Determined not to give in, he asked the support of no less a person than the President of the Republic. He was sure of M. Carnot, who had a great esteem for him, and always received him in the most friendly manner, as did also M. Casimir Périer and M. Félix Faure. The story goes that the headmaster of a certain lycée having refused to honour with his presence some athletic sports got up by his pupils in the Bois de Boulogne, M. de Coubertin simply went to look for the President (who frequently drove in the Bois), and

induced M. Carnot to appear unexpectedly on the ground as distributor of the prizes. One can imagine the feelings of the headmaster when he heard what he had missed!

Great efforts were also made to win over public opinion by articles in the papers and by frequent fêtes. For these almost anything served as a pretext. In 1889 a Congrès des Exercises Physiques was attached to the Universal Exhibition, M. de Coubertin being the sole organiser. In November, 1892, the Union des Sports Athlétiques celebrated its fifth anniversary. There were running matches presided over by the Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia, then visiting Paris; a race across country at Meudon, when the prizes were given in the Observatory by M. Janssen, President of the Académie des Sciences; a series of lectures at the Sorbonne on the history of athleticism from the days of antiquity, followed by a grand banquet at which M. Jules Simon made one of his best speeches. A favourite idea of M. de Coubertin's was, as he said, to associate "muscle with mind," so that athletics might not be considered good only for the stupid pupils, and unworthy of the more intelligent. On another occasion all the sailing boats of Paris were sent down the Seine to attend a rowing match, and the spectacle, as seen from the river banks, was not to be forgotten.

In course of time M. de Coubertin considered that he had gained his point, and that the good seed, having once been germinated, might be left to grow by itself. He therefore turned his attention to international athletics, and with a very pretty ambition announced suddenly that he proposed to revive the Olympic games. The international side of athletics had always fascinated him. In 1891 he had invited a team of the New York Manhattan Athletic Club to come over to Paris; and the year following he organised the first football match between French and English clubs; then a rowing match of eight oars on the Seine, in which the London Rowing Club was beaten; after which he obtained admission for French crews at Henley. But the revival of the Olympic games was a very different affair. After a meeting held in London in February, 1893, and another at New York, the same year, when the proposal was received with but moderate enthusiasm, M. de Coubertin organised an International Congress at Paris, in June, 1894, ostensibly to settle the question of amateurism. The real object of the meeting-the proposed revival of the Olympic games-was held back till the last moment. A splendid inaugural fête was given in the grand amphitheatre of the Sorbonne, at which nearly two thousand persons were present. The races and the assaults-at-arms held by torchlight in the Racing Club on the last day of this brilliant