KFKU Sportscast
April 15, 1944

WAR AND ATHLETICS, THEIR PARADOZES

Fred Eugene Leonard says: Quote, Man's earliest endeavor to perfect
the body, discipline the mind and mold the character of the young by means
of selected forms of physical activity and special regimen could doubtless
be traced back to a prehistoric age, The study of ancient customs of China
end India, Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians,
the Persians and the Hebrews might also yield some curious facts. But if
one's purpose is to follow the evolution of modern forms of physical education
in Europe and America and to note the significant contributions and modifications
introduced at various stages, it is Sufficient to begin with Greece as it was
in the century and a half whose middle point is the year of Sialemis and
Thermopylae (480 B.C.). There we find 'gymastics' queeveiiy adopted as a
necessary part of education, provision everywhere made for the exercise of
youths and grom men in establishments supported and administered by the
state, great national festivals at which the chief attractions were cone
tests in physical prowess, and at a later day sculptors able to reproduce
from the type presented to them in the gymasia ideal human figures which
have never ween excelled in beauty.

"Several things must be borne in mind when one thinks of Greece in
the period of the Persian Wars, It was not a nation in the modern sense
of a political wit with a central government and circumscribed territory,
but a group of independent states and cities in European Greece, on the
islands of the Aegean Sea, along the west coast of Asia Minor, and wherever
else the Greek language was spoken by persons who felt the tie of a common

descent, common reliegious beliefs and common customs.