Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage

by Walter B. Cannon

The Significance of International Athletic Competitions

For reasons given above, I venture to lay emphasis on a suggestion, which has been made before by others, that the promotion of great international athletic contests, such as the Olympic games, would do for our young men much that is now claimed as peculiar to the values of military discipline. The substitution of athletic rivalries for battle is not unknown. In the Philippine Islands, according to Worcester,[5] there were no athletics before the American occupation. The natives soon learned games from the soldiers. And when the sports reached such development that competition between towns and provinces was possible, they began to arouse the liveliest enthusiasm among the people. The physical development of the participants has been greatly stimulated, the spirit of fair play and sportsmanship, formerly lacking, has sprung into existence in every section of the Islands, and the annual meets between athletic teams from various provinces are recognized as promoting a general and friendly understanding among the different Filipino tribes. The fierce Igarots of Bontoc, once constantly at war with neighboring tribes, now show their prowess not in head-hunting, but in baseball, wrestling, and the tug-of-war.[*]

[*] It is reported that when these warriors first appeared at the games, each brought his spear, which he drove into the ground beside him, ready for use. As the nature of the new rivalries became known, the spears were left behind.

Is it unreasonable to expect that what has happened in the Philippine Islands might, by proper education and suggestion, happen elsewhere in the world? Certainly the interest in athletic contests is no slight and transient interest. At the time of a great war we know that news of the games is fully as much demanded as news of the war. Already in the United States, without special stimulation, the number of young men engaged in athletic training is estimated as equal to the number in the standing army. And in England, belief in the efficacy of athletics as a means of promoting hardihood and readiness to face stern hazards has found expression in the phrase that England’s battles have been won on the football fields of Rugby and of Eton. With the further promotion of international contests the influence of competitive sports is likely to increase rather than lessen. Within national boundaries emulation is sure to stimulate extensively such games as will bring forth the best representative athletes that the country can produce. In one of the high-spirited European nations, which made a poor showing at the last Olympic meet, thousands of young men began training for the next meet, under a director imported from the nation that had made the highest records.

Training for athletic contests is quite as likely to enure young men to physical hardship and fatigue, is quite as conducive to the development of bodily vigor, the attainment of alertness and skill and the practice of self-restraint, as is army life with its traditional associations and easy license. It may be urged, however, that an essential element is lacking in all this discussion—the sobering possibility that in war the supreme surrender of life itself may be required. Death for one’s country is indeed glorious. But the argument that being killed is desirable has little to commend it. When the strongest and sturdiest are constantly chosen to be fed to the engines of annihilation, the race is more likely to lose greater values than it gains from the spectacle of self-sacrifice, however perfect that may be. Are there not advantages in the conditions of great athletic rivalries that may compensate for war’s most austere demand? The race of hardy men, to secure which the militarists urge war, is much more likely to result from the honoring and preserving of vigorous men in their vigor than it is from the systematic selection of such men to be destroyed in their youth.

There are other aspects of international games which strongly commend them as an alternative to the pursuit of military discipline. The high standards of honor and fairness in sport; its unfailing revelation of excellence without distinctions of class, wealth, race or color; the ease with which it becomes an expression of the natural feelings of patriotism; the respect which victory and pluckily borne defeat inspire in competitors and spectators alike; the extension of acquaintance and understanding which follows from friendly and magnanimous rivalry among strong men who come together from the ends of the earth—each of these admirable features of athletic contests between nations might be enlarged upon. But, as intimated before, these moral considerations must be left without further mention, as being irrelevant to the physiological processes with which we are dealing.

We are concerned with the question of exercising the fighting instinct and thus assuring the physical welfare of the race. The race must degenerate, the militarists say, if this instinct is not allowed to express itself in war. This declaration we are in a position to deny, for the evidence is perfectly clean-cut that the aggressive instincts, which through æons of racial experience have naturally and spontaneously developed vigor and resourcefulness in the body, are invited by elemental emotions, and that through these emotions energies are released which are highly useful to great physical effort. No stupid routine of drill, or any other deadening procedure, will call these energizing mechanisms into activity. War and the preparations for war nowadays have become too machine-like to serve as the best means of preserving and disciplining these forces. The exhilarating swing and tug and quick thrust of the big limb muscles have largely vanished. Pressing an electric contact or bending the trigger finger is a movement altogether too trifling. If, then, natural feelings must be expressed, if the fighting functions of the body must be exercised, how much better that these satisfactions be found in natural rather than in artificial actions, how much more reasonable that men should struggle for victory in the ancient ways, one against another, body and spirit, as in the great games.