I'm always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (1936 Olympics games, for instance), that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one can deduce it from gereral principles.
Nearly all the sports pratised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village green, where you pickup sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some lager unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the internation level sport is frankly mimic warfare. The significant thing is not the behavior of the plays, but the attitude of the spectators, and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work them into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously beliveve, at any rate for short periods, that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.
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