Like an evangelist with an unwavering belief in his message, Baron Pierre de Coubertin continued to preach the benefits of exercise throughout his life.  In “Olympic Letter VIII: The Formation of Character,” which appeared in the Olympic Review in 1918, he spelled out a hierarchy of advantages from the personal to the social to the broader landscape of human progress. 

“Physical exercise ... can help to forge character, strengthen a community, and even, in democratic times, to provide a link between different social classes. It then escapes from its narrow physiological frontiers, establishes itself at the center of education between psychology on the one hand and art on the other, and becomes a main factor in general progress.”