Political affinities in sports

Politics is a very French sport. We put them everywhere, even in the sporting world, which asked for nothing more than to live in peace, relieved of tax burdens, protected from the gods of war and public education, provided with vast spaces and endowed with generous subsidies.

Politics has entered the sporting world through different doors, despite the guard watching over the barriers.

We discussed Catholic patronage. At the same time when they triumphed at the Champ-de-Mars, as we know, the sports socialists were fighting at Montreuil-sous-Bois.

The Sports Federation of Labor, an affinity group, was first attacked by the Red Army, represented, it is said, by a special envoy from Moscow, and sportsmen of Communist opinion.

After the attack, the Communists withdrew and the socialist sportsmen, who had not lost their bearings, organized themselves in full congress, in such a way that the Sports Federation of Labor remained in their hands. These sports socialists intend to develop, under the aegis of the F.S.T. a free propaganda action in favor of physical education in working-class circles, leaving aside the preoccupations of the Red International and the tumultuous dreams of the French Section of interplanetary communism.

Thus politics, despite the precautions, slips in everywhere.

I would like to remind friends of physical education and athletes that we currently have other dogs to worry about.

Whether you are on the right or on the left, a common idea is capable of bringing together people of goodwill.

Wouldn't this idea be by chance the feeling that men have of the necessity of physical exercise, maintaining the human body and forming the soul in view of the combats of life?

Can sport be religious, freethinker, radical, socialist or communist?
Maybe. But don't we rather know how to consider it quite simply as an element of social progress and international peace?

The sporting idea has its own intrinsic value, independent of convictions, civic hopes and spiritual ambitions. Undoubtedly, the sporting idea can be transformed by different levers. The more levers there are, the more chances we have of seeing the idea triumph.

Sectarianism in sport is madness, you can't prevent people from thinking, any more than there can be any question of depriving them of sight, of taste. of smell and touch. The sixth sense, not included in the enumeration, must be the good one. And common sense, we believe, commands to be tolerant towards those who seek the good, whatever their tendencies and affinities.

Marcel DELARBRE