Baron Pierre de Coubertin believed in the inexorable force of human progress.  Across the course of his career—as he invented a new movement to unite the world in friendship and peace—his hopeful optimism shone through his writings.  His faith in the ability of education to guide modern society toward a better world was also unrelenting.  Five years after the tragic devastation of World War I, he was still lobbying to integrate the values of sport and Olympism into all levels of the education system.  That was part of the argument he made in his article, “Between Two Battles:  Between Olympism and the Popular University,” which appeared in La Revue de la Semaine in January 1922.

“Today, bridges have been built over the ignorance of yesteryear ... Let us take advantage of this fact to establish, deep in young minds, firm foundations on which the structure of the special knowledge needed for the proper functioning of modern societies can be built with absolute certainty.”