World War I was still raging in the countryside of France as Baron Pierre de Coubertin wrote these words in February of 1918.  Looking ahead to the end of the war—which would arrive ten months later—Coubertin expressed his vision that the role of sport in society could be broadened as Europe began to rebuild itself.  This passage reveals the Baron’s essential idea that sport should serve a social purpose—in this case as a safeguard of the social peace.  While this text is from an address he would deliver to the Greek Liberal Club of Lausanne, “What We Can Now Ask of Sport,” it signals his full intention to push his colleagues in the IOC to ensure that the role of sport in society was expanded as the world recovered from war.

“The sporting renaissance created national strength through the cultivation of individual energies ... Now sport can do something more for us; if we know how to let it, it will be able tomorrow to safeguard the essential good without which no durable reconstruction will be possible—social peace.”