You see, then, that these far-distant memories cannot give me authority to claim a right, however small, to address you on this occasion. I am a stranger in this world of sport, which has developed so rapidly in the last thirty years. I have followed only at a distance the movement which has given it birth, and I should find myself in great difficulties if I had to discuss in its details one of the numberless questions attaching to this form of contemporary activity. What authority, then, have I for addressing you on this occasion? None. And the kindness which Baron de Coubertin has shown in honouring me with an invitation to address you, though most flattering to me, cannot fill the void left by manifest incompetence for the task. You will tell me that I should have done better to remember the wise advice Homer gave the cobbler, and to refuse this honour of which I was not worthy. And you will be right. But I would excuse myself by telling you first of all that it is difficult to refuse anything to so distinguished and amiable a man and to so ardent an advocate of the causes he makes his own as M. de Coubertin. Secondly, if I am a sportsman who long ago has made his final exit, I am also a man who tries, as far as his feeble wits will allow him, to understand that life outside himself in which he can take no immediate and direct part. Is not that the rôle, and in a certain sense the obsession, of the historian? The historian must understand all the forms and phenomena of life; crimes, intrigues, battles, wars, revolutions, loves, hatreds, perfidies, the hidden weaknesses of great men, the blind impulses of the masses, the noblest and the basest sentiments which actuate the human mind. If we were required to have experienced everything that we are required to understand, the profession of historian would be the most difficult and the most dangerous in the world; for, in order to qualify, a man would have at least to run the risk of the galleys or of the scaffold. Without a doubt, this necessity of understanding all the forms of the life outside is also one of the great weaknesses of historians. Often they make mistakes; even more often, the picture they give of things seems but pale by contrast with the living reality, to those who have actually lived that reality. I am quite sure that this will be my fate, if I talk to you about things which you know better than do I. That, however, is the inevitable drawback of the profession, and I shall go through with my task, relying on your kind indulgence.