"THE INTERNATIONAL GROWTH OF BASKETBALL"

By De. Fewest C.. Alden
Head Basketball Coach, Univ. of Kans,

Perhaps there is no game in all the world that enjoys the
same possibilities for international uniformity as does basketball.
Why not include this sport on our next Olympic calendar? Los
Angeles in 195<.

At present, it is estimated by authorities that there are
eighteen million people playing this indoor game,

India, France, Italy, Japan, the Phillippine Islands, Chine,
Persia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Greece, Mexico, Canada, Poland,
Russia, and Germany, as well as the South American countries, have
been playing basketball for several years and today are turning
out creditable teams.

Some of these countries had their introduction to the game
of basketball almost simultaneous with the inventor's first draft.
The first printed copy of the baskctball rules appeared in "The
Triangle", the International Yai.C.A. school paper, Springrieid,
Massachusetts, in 1892. At this time, Dr. James Naismith and
Dr. Luther H. Gulick were co-editors of the Triangle, and, because
of lack of available funds for printing, they deemed it both wise
and expedient to gct the rules in printed form in this way.

Because of this and because of its origin at Springfield,
basketball has spread uniformly to all nations of the globe. The
Y.M.C.A. secretaries who were sent out from the Springfield school
carried the knowledge of the game along with their other work into
"511 the world" and taught its principles to all peoples.

Duncan Patton, a "Y" graduate, implanted the game in India,
in 1894. Emil Thies, another graduate of the Springfield Y.M.C.A.
school returned to his native country, France, in 1895, and es-
tablished the game there. In 1898, Dr. F. N. Seerley, at present
Dean of the Springfield, Massachusetts Y.M.C.A. Training School,
secured a leave of absence to spend the year in France. During
Dr. Seerley's stay in the land of the fleur-de-lis, he did much
to extend the interests of basketball--already well established
by Thies. Italy has played the game for a number of years--per-
haps taking up the game through contact with its neighbor, France.

At the Inter-allied Games in the Pershing Stadium, outside
of Paris, in June, 1919, the United States, in 4 series of games
for the championship, defeated both France and Italy.

Ishakawa, another "Y" student, took the game to Japan, his
native land, in 1900. Ernest Quigley, the National League umpire
and major sports official, several months ago wrote me from Japan
that basketball had taken an unusual hold upon the Orientals. He
stated that great throngs of spectators attend all games.

Our United States soldiers established basketball in the
Philippine Islands during the same year that Ishakawa took it to
his land of Japan.

China is indebted for the game to four men, Galey, Robertson,
Exner, and Siler. Robert Galcy, a former center in football at
Princeton, left Springfield in 1904 for Tientsin to establish both
missions and the game of basketball in North China. J. Robertson,
in 1905, followed his colleague to Tientsin to assist in the inten-

give development of this work. Dr. Max. J. Exner, a medical