The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-02-20

FOOTBALL IN FRANCE.
The French View of It-Never Brutal Ex-
cept When Played by Brutes.

The French View OF 1t-Never Brutal Ex-
cept When Played by Brutes.
The game of football, according to
the Rugby rules, is now officially en-
throned in France. It is the great win
ter game of our athletic clubs and of
our colleges. Although its adopts are al
ready quite numerous, many people
don't even know what the game really
is, and few know anything of its origin
or its rules. Those whose idea of the
game is formed from the legends that
have been scattered around it fancy that
it is brutal scramble, which is associ-
ated with serious and even fatal acct
dents.
Certainly it is not game for dudes.
The shock is rude, and the rushes and
collisions are too frequent to present
chance to measure their force. But aft
er all there is no evidence to show that
the accidents are more serious or more
numerous in football than in other open
air sports, such as riding, bicycling,
fencing and boating.
AS in all games in which emulation
and the desire to win form the princi-
pal features of the struggle, the chances
of accident exist in football; but, judg-
ing of it by the amount of success which
it has received in France, we can SIM
| ply say that it is exciting, and by no
means so terrible as some people would
have us believe it to be-
Certainly it used to be dangerous, but
that was in the days when the rules
| which governed it were not so firmly es-
tablished as they are today. In the time
of Edward II Of England, for example,
in 1914, it was unlawful to play it in
the streets of London on account of the
frequent accidents which it caused. It
was also dangerous in Brittany, where
it was played under the name of soule
In fact, it was then more of fight than
game 1t was dramatic and hot af-
fair, in which there were boxing, stran-
Cling and breaking of heads. 1t was a
game in which man could kill his en-
envy without neglecting Easter duty,
| provided he could do so apparently by
chance.
Fortunately soule is no longer played
in our rural localities, and the football
which is now played in France is moth
ing more than the national English
game toned down by the rules of Eng
lish schools and introduced into France
by Messrs. q. de Saint-Cla and Saint
Chaffray, the authors of a very inter
esting pamphlet on the subject, dealing
with the progress of the game in France.
This progress appears all the more re-
markable when we consider the number
of the enemies of the thing, including
those who don't understand it, those
who cannot possibly play it and the
chauvins, for whom it is an insult to
attempt to introduce an English game
into this country.
Moreover, football arrived here on the
heels of the heartrending statistics Of
its killed and wounded, taken from an
English sheet and in all appearance
quite authentic. But in these figures
two indispensable elements were want
ing-the total number of the players
and the precise localities where the ac-
cidents occurred. In round numb the
army of footballers count 100, 600 men,
and this of course reduces the proper
tion of accidents enumerated in the
famous list. And, moreover, these acct
dents have occurred in the mining dis
tricts of the north, whose rough and
brutal population ignore the distinction
and courtesy SO necessary.
When played by we'll bred young
men, football is not dangerous, and the
proof of this assertion is to be found in
the five years of its existence on the
programmes of our athletic clubs and
college games. During that five years
not one serious accident has happened
at a football contest in this country.
The figures referred to above were
we'll calculated to brighten schoolteach-
ers and parents, but now the fathers OF
our boys, hostile to the game at first,
encourage them to play, and the pro-
fessors favor it because its chief charac-
teristics are discipline and self denial.
Figaro.