KAISER'S NEW TEMPLE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1814, 29 July 1913, Page 6

KAISER'S NEW TEMPLE.

"A SUPER-STADIUM FOR SUPERGERMANS." IMPRESSIVE DEDICATION. The parade, tho pageant of a new athletic era, which on Sunday, Juue 8, drew Berlin to tho dedication by tho Kaiser of tho Stadium at GrunowaM, which will be used for tho Olympic Games in 1916, was essentially unlike most parades. It was as full ot purpose and meaning as it was vast and various. 'i'iio building, as solid as Germans can make it, permanent, hewn out of the ground, was dedicated with almost religious fervour and military pomp. Over 30,000 athletes, men, women, and children, without pause or hitch, paraded, ran, played games, and performed. They represented nearly 3,000,000 German athletes, and they performed before the Kaiser and a great crowd of members of skating, hockey, running, swimming, and other clubs. They even out-numbered tho spectators, as if to prove that Germany, at any rate, was not a nation of vicarious athletes. Nothing approaching tho spectacle was seen at the lost Olympic Games themselves, even in respect of athletic physique. Tho Gorman nation has become athletic through and through, and incaus to prove it. The Kaiser himself, on the ovo of his jubilee, intends to found a new athletic ora for Germans. Tho new Stadium which lie opened is to lie tho temple of the now cult. It is a super-Stadium for superGermans, who are to be trained into a physical perfection superior to that of Frederick tho Great's 'bodyguard, and these "Kaiser's" athletes are to serve tho national cause like soldiers, Tho brief speech of General Count von Podbielski in opening tile Stadium temple of a new physical religion was prepared as carefully as if it were to bo permanently engraved on a national monument. "A theatre has been provided for tho contests of peace, dedicated to the development of physical strength, to tho steeling of the will power, to the fostering of patriotism." What ho said the German nation means. The Kaiser and the Government are cooperating with other organisers, and presently little stadiums or apparatus for training in gymnastics, swimming, running, and' games will tempt the population to athletics all over tho German Empire."

Flight of 10,000 Pigeons. Symbol.", pictures, and poetry ■ were requisitioned to instil tho speech into the German imagination directly it was delivened' from Hie pulpit in front of tlie Kaiser's box. Ten thousand pigeons, each carrying a little' paper roll of the speech, were loosed. They looked like a snowflurry as they dashed up and almost obscured a 1 military aeroplane .which, dragon-like, circled above tho Stadium. They carried tho message in place of tho telegraphs, locally closed on Sunday. The speech was also officially translated into all tongues, that tho world may under-stand-what'Germany means by employing athletics in tho causo of will power, muscle, and patriotism.

This parade, to which the student athletic societies with their flags gave a final note of colour and dash, was watched by tho representatives of most countries. The Duke of Somerset, who is to preside at tho crucial Olympic meeting on Wednesday in London, journeyed over especially. He can hardly have helped contrasting the physique and* precision of these 30,000 Germans with the slovenly shuffle of the indifferent bands of presumably picked British athletes at Stockholm, but the difference lies only in the organisation, for which tho British Olympic Council is responsible. The Germans have already everything complete, even to the making of the greatest athletic arena in the world, and havo stirred the whole population to eager co-operation. Our organisation has an acutely disinterested public, and has produced no scheme. Tho Germans will be as good as the Swedes and Americans in 191 G. Even when they lose, their efforts will evoke admiration for its thoroughness and pluck. The German physique is still, perhaps, too heavy for perfection. Somo things were absurd. The exaggerated goose-step of the small hoys, the amplo laurel wreaths on the brows of the picked athletes, and the half-military, half-gymnastic scaling of sham ramparts were like a parody of both war and gymnastics. But in 191G we shall appear and bo held ludicrously inferior in athletics and sport if we do not organise, and, with special emphasis, prepare our competitors for the games in this solid and temple of athletics in tho greenwood outside Berlin.