NETHERLANDS: Mere Sport

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"Mere Sport"

The 1928 Olympic Games are to be held in the Netherlands. A bill went before Parliament asking for 1,000,000 florins ($400,000) to finance the great sporting event.

The Opposition seized upon a vital point, hammered it with much vigor. Some of the Games would be held on Sunday. The Calvinists held up their hands in horror, ejaculated: "How terrible!" They would support no bill that would thus desecrate the Sabbath.

The pressing reason of the Opposition in opposing the bill was said to be economy. This theory won many of the Government supporters over to the Opposition and was said to have seriously jeopardized the passage of the bill; for many prominent Deputies averred that, if the country was too poor to send an adequate representation to Geneva to discuss humanitarian reforms, it was decidedly too poor to spend money in the interests of "mere sport."