will continue to get gloriously drunk, so long as the production of wine, beer, and spirits increases. Now why is it that this, the only efficacious remedy, is just the one which our epoch cannot bring itself to apply? Why do we see everywhere governments taking measures of more or less efficacy against alcoholism and at the same time contributing, directly or indirectly, to the increase in the production of alcoholic drinks? The reason is, that nothing is more difficult for our civilisation than to impose a limit on anything. Its impetus carries it too far in everything. It is almost a law of its constitution. We have, to a great extent, lost the sense of just measure, because we have weakened or destroyed nearly all the authorities and moral forces which used to make the limits respected. Our greatness and our power are partly due to disequilibrium; and often enough we are called on to pay the tragic penalty for this at the moment when we least expect the call. This is, however, a long digression, and you may with reason ask me to return to the matter which interests us. I have not lost sight of it; for this digression has a very close connection with our subject. This epoch which misuses everything, misuses and will misuse sport. It will make it—it has already begun to make it—one more of the elements of excitement, of competition, and of exhaustion, already alas! only too numerous. No illusions are possible on this score. It might even be said that sport is one of the things of which our epoch will probably make the greatest misuse. History justifies us in this fear, for it proves to us that even those civilisations, like the Greek and Roman, which succeeded in limiting themselves in everything else, misused games. Is it likely that our civilisation, which misuses toilsome activities like work, will easily preserve a just measure in amusements? Besides, you have only to look round you to see interests forming groups, coalitions, and organisations for the purpose of exploiting, in this field also, the morbid need for excitement which has taken hold of the masses; their desire for amusements and distractions and even their incorrigible weakness for games of chance. Those, then, who wish to purge sport of its elements of haste and crowd, to transform it—I borrow once more M. de Coubertin’s happy phrase—into the “Empire du Matin Calme,” will have a singularly difficult task before them. If, however, the task is difficult, it is for that all the nobler. The modern world has need, great and urgent need, of balance, measure, and harmony, if it is not to run the risk of being stifled by the excess of its energy. Do not let yourselves be deceived by its assurance, its pride, the blind confidence in its powers which it affects, the haughty challenge it so often throws to the humble wisdom of past generations. We are richer, wiser, more powerful than were our grandfathers. But because