The principles of sport generally, it may be here interpolated, are not quite the same in Germany as in England, though no country has imitated England in regard to sport so closely and successfully as Germany. Up to a comparatively few years ago the Germans had neither inclination nor means for it, and though always enthusiastic hunters, hunting--not the English fox-hunting, but hunting the boar and the bear, the wolf and the deer--was almost the sole form of manly sport practised. _Turnen_, the most popular sort of German indoor gymnastics, only began in 1861, a couple of years after the birth of the Emperor. There are now nearly a dozen cricket clubs alone in Berlin, football clubs all over the Empire, tennis clubs in every town, rowing clubs at all the seaports and along the large rivers, nearly all following English rules and in numerous cases using English sporting terms. At the same time sport is not the religion it is in England--indeed, to keep up the metaphor, hardly a living creed. The German attitude towards sport is not altogether the same as the English attitude. In England the object of the game is that the best man shall win, that he shall not be in any way unfairly or unequally handicapped _vis-à-vis_ his opponent, and the honour, not the intrinsic value of the prize, is the main consideration. These principles are not yet fully understood or adopted in Germany, possibly owing to the early military training of the German youth making the carrying off the prize anyhow and by any means the main object. It is _Realpolitik_ in sport, and a _Realpolitik_ which is not wholly unknown in England; but while the spirit of _Realpolitik_ is still perceivable in German sport, it is equally perceivable that the standard English way of viewing sporting competition is becoming more and more approached in Germany.