The new apostolate of Baron P. de Coubertin

By Max MATHEY.

The other day, in Marseilles, before an audience of two thousand people, after having summarized his "Thirty years of Neo-Olympism", Baron Pierre de Coubertin indicated, once again, that he intended next spring to give up the presidency of the International Olympic Committee, a veritable League of Nations where representatives of 45 countries of the world sat.
And the next day, in Aix-en-Provence, a Society of Universal History was created under his auspices, whose fundamental axiom is that any fragmentary historical teaching is rendered sterile by the absence of a prior knowledge of the whole of human annals.
Was there a correlation between the two things: the retirement of Baron de Coubertin and the founding of this new Society? ... It was interesting to know. Mr. de Coubertin was passing through Paris where he spoke with the President of the Republic and the President of the Council as well as with various other personalities, we went to ask him:
There is indeed a connection, he told us, but the creation of this society is only one chapter of a larger work, a work of educational renovation, prepared for a long time, now well developed in my mind and of which I intend to work to lay the foundations,

"From the beginning of the 20th century approximately, culture began to retrograde almost everywhere. This was well before the advent of the nouveau riche. Obviously, the race for fortune helped to accelerate the movement. People only think about making money by all means and, from then on, disinterested knowledge loses its hold on opinion. However, the real reason for this decadence is the impossibility of henceforth harmonizing the subject matter of teaching with the methods in use.
"These methods are synthetic. With autonomous orders of knowledge: physics, chemistry, Latin, literature, geography... they aimed to harmoniously develop the individual's brain and to equip it with a sort of catalogue raisonné of the world and of life. However, for a long time now, this synthesis has not been achieved. The elements that participated in it have become far too complex and numerous. The apparatus is clogged. The product that comes out of it asserts itself by an irremediable incomprehension or by an outrageous specialism. Unheard of is the number of people who, these days, know an enormous amount of things and do not understand what they know. Hence the fabulous governmental "blunders" that have assailed the political history of Europe for twenty-five years; hence the innumerable groups of mutual praise that maintain literary mediocrity. Covered by the prestige of wireless or the caterpillar, our era drapes its poverty of conception and execution in comic pride, because, with the forces at its disposal, it could have achieved better than the organization of a shipwreck.

- So you believe in the imminent and fatal Revolution?... I then asked. To M. de Coubertin,

- Eh! I do not see very well how one would succeed now in preventing the access of the proletariat to power. By their way of exercising it for twenty years, the owners seem to me to have lost the game. The responsibility of capitalism in the outbreak of war and the sabotage of peace can no longer be doubted... But whether the manual workers accede to the government or the owners remain there, there is a revolution which is equally indispensable to accomplish in both cases: the pedagogical revolution. And it is the one I am concerned with.

- What will it consist of?

- The Seven-branched Torch -

Our living conditions today are dominated by a certain number of essential notions which must be placed from the beginning before the adolescent whose first conception constitutes the elementary degree and whose study, more and more detailed, represents the successive degrees of culture. So, departure, the same for all, and no change of route along the way, These notions are those of the sidereal world of which our star is a part, of this star itself and of the great physical, chemical, mechanical laws which govern it, of the labors accomplished by humanity during the sixty recorded centuries which are behind us, of the production and exchange of wealth, of the feeling and search for beauty, of the aspiration to explain the mysteries of life, finally, of the constitution of the human body and the way to maintain and use it. It turns out that these astronomical, planetary, historical, economic, aesthetic, philosophical, hygienic notions... are seven in number... This will be the seven-branched torch; symbol of a well-enlightened humanity! Apart from that, two "mechanisms": mathematics and ancient and modern languages. Here is the land register, the general plan, but you understand that I cannot defend it or explain it in a few words...

- But, practically, how will you proceed?

- I once asked Judes. Simon for thirty years to re-tan France through Sports. It is not an exaggeration to ask for ten years for the propaganda that I am going to set in motion to operate effectively. I have neither the time nor the means to proceed with big advertising campaigns. I believe in the effectiveness of hammering by indefinite and patient repetition... It has not been so bad for the Olympics, has it?

As we can see, it is a real revolution in the educational system of nations that Baron Pierre de Coubertin wants to make, with this difference, that he has prepared a whole system of reconstruction, not being content to demolish an entire secular edifice and leave it like that. He wants to build something new that responds to human aspirations and the needs of our modern intellectual and material life. When we realize what Baron de Coubertin has managed to achieve in thirty years in the field of sport, we can expect to see him do great things in the educational field as he understands it and whose main lines he has briefly outlined for the readers of Paris-Soir.

Max MATHEY