EXPLAINS BOOING OF U. S. OLYMPIC TEAM

The following is the second of two articles on the Olympic Games written especially for the Crimson by Burke Boyce '22, who was a member of the American Olympic Fencing Team.

There has been a good deal of discussion over the unpleasant attitude with which the audiences at the Olympic Games received the American contestants; and that attitude-the booing of the soccer team, for instance-has been interpreted to mean everything from direct hostility to the United States to a merely unsportsmanlike objection to our "semi-professional" method of training and competing. And various remedies have been suggested; we should become less professional, they should become more professional, the Olympic Games should be discontinued, the Olympic Games should be broadened in scope, and so on.

As a matter of fact, I saw no unpleasant attitude of any sort expressed by any of the spectators that jammed the Stadium at Colombes on the afternoon, for example, when the American 400 yard relay team smashed a world record once, and then topped its own record a short time later; nor did I see, during the whole time I was in Paris, any sign of hostility or even of impatience (except, of course for the taxi bandits and their tips).

Cites Reasons For Unpleasantness

Undoubtedly however, there must have been some unpleasantness somewhere, sometime; and I have three reasons for that unpleasantness reasons that I figured out over there, on the spot. The American Team was booed in the Olympic Games largely because of its numbers, because of a psychological error on the part of those in charge, and because of the attitude of Americans in general when they travel abroad. The accusation of semi-professionalism in our athletics, of playing the game to win rather than for the sport of it, does not seem to me to hold good us a reason for jealousy or the part of the Continental nations. For with them, in a good many cases, it is not a matter of coaches and masseurs and trainers, but a matter of a personal dislike toward going into strict "training" for any event. I defy the best coach in the world to make a consistent winner out of any man whose ideas of an athletic contest are irretrievably coupled with a gala celebration the night before the event, and cigarettes and pipes up to the time he steps into his athletic clothes. The Continental nations, and England too, know very well the American attitude toward that matter of training, and they know that it is simply a question of individual will-a question in which jealousy can hardly be involved. Whether they want to go through the same mill is a different thing, but certainly not one for which we can be held to blame.

American Team Too Big

But I do feel that the size of the American Team smacked somewhat of unfairness. Of course we had no more men proportionately than any other nation, but in the opening parade at the Stadium the American contingent so out-numbered the rest that it seemed almost pitiable-like a small college with twenty-two men on its football squad coming to Cambridge to play Harvard. And no matter how well the small team plays, no matter whether it beats the larger team or not, the contest will always seem one-sided to those sitting in the stands. Our Olympic Team, with six or seven stars and dozens of substitutes in nearly every event, must have looked a very hulking bully to a person whose hopes were centered on the di-

minutive representation from Finland, or from France. Whether or not we should limit our numbers is a question of policy to be decided by better men than I; but I sincerely believe that it is an important question.

Playing of Anthem Grated

Then there was a curious small thing, one which you might not imagine would be a trouble-maker but one which nevertheless came to be exceedingly annoying to the audience. That was the custom of playing, at the close of each event, the national anthem of the country which had won, and of running up the flags of the countries taking the first three places. Now that is a pleasant courtesy to the winners, but it becomes an awful bore to the spectators, whether they be winners or losers. More than that, it rubs in the victory just that much harder, and emphasizes the question of differing nationality just that much more. So long, as there is a mob psychology to bring a catch to the throat as the national emblem is raised on its staff and the national anthem played in honor of an American victory, so long as there is the feeling that possessed one member of the team when he rushed up to me in a frenzy of delight at having snapped a photo of three American flags fluttering from the three winning poles-just so long will the loser feel proportionately disgruntled. After a day of it, too, the performance becomes not only disagreeable, but a nuisance. One American who spent a good deal of his time in the audience told me that he used to hope for a Swiss victory, as the Swiss anthem was the shortest of all!

Americans Were Americans

Finally, the Americans were-well, Americans: which sadly enough, is saying a good deal on the Continent. For there is a large class of American tourists, especially since the war, I am told, that fairly reek with bland self-righteousness and superiority. The people on the Continent are foreigners, to be shouted at and suspected and treated with high-handedness lest they presume too much; and, not unnaturally, the "foreigners" resent that attitude and react to it. This has nothing to do with the Olympic Games, but I cannot go past this point without saying that there were times in Paris and elsewhere this summer when I was actually ashamed of being an American!. And I have felt many times, too that no American should be allowed to travel abroad until he had proven his ability to act as a gentleman under all circumstances. I do not wonder any more at any dislike or suspicion or hostility that crops out against Americans, whether at the Olympic Games or in the Place de I'Opera.

Our own hands are none too clean-and yet this criticism of hostility at the Games is just another example of our self-righteousness. The newspapers stir us with accounts of how the gallant boys were coolly received by the French spectators; but they do not tell us some of the things I saw with my own eyes: a young Frenchman knocked deliberately and for no reason from his bicycle into three inches of black dust at Cherbourg; drunkenness on the Olympic train from Cherbourg to Paris; the stealing of three bottles of wine from an old peasant woman at the station at Caen; and several other things of like nature that I do not put down for publication because they came to me by report rather than as first-hand verity. In general, I believe the members of the Team were courteous and considerate and well-behaved; but so, in general, were the French audiences that watched the Games. At any rate, remembering always our immense numbers, and that irritating business of anthem and flag, it does not seem to me we were treated sufficiently badly to enable us to cast any slurs. This question of booing is a question of breeding rather than of nationality anyway-as witness the South Boston, aggregation in the Harvard Stadium not so long ago. And is it so inconceivable or so nationally insulting, that there should be a Parisian "South Boston"?

French Officials Did Best

The French officials did all in their power to make the Games extremely comfortable and pleasant for all concerned. Some of our men misbehaved themselves grossly; some of their countrymen, excited and excitable, did the same-except that they were less to blame in that they acted on the spur of tension and without malice aforethought. But neither example of rowdyism should be given sufficient importance to mar the general effect of the whole. The French honestly did the best they knew how to do for us; and if the sleeping quarters were not what we had been accustomed to, and the transportation somewhat bizarre, and the crowds somewhat chilly-we should at least remember that the French and American ideas of sleeping quarters differ vastly; that they consider charabancs and rough roads a daily affair, even if we do not; and that no crowd can be expected to enthuse over the continued defeat of its own representatives.

There have been too many theories and too much talk about the Olympic Games. Try to make them what they are not, turn them over to the idealists and the newspapers, and the idealists and the newspapers will torture them out of their natural shape as they have tortured everything that has fallen into their clutches. Let them alone, to be nothing more than good sportsmanship with a little "blowing off of steam" to add zest, and they will continue to thrive-and to bring about good results in their own natural time