Late in life, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was still espousing the ancient philosophy of Hellenism as a formula for solving modern problems.  In an open letter “To My Hellenic Friends,” written in April of 1934, he described the balance between public morality and personal conviction, between civic life and personal pursuits achieved in Ancient Greece as the essential path to social peace at the time. He believed that such a philosophy, adopted by a nation, would do more to produce public harmony than the economic or diplomatic structures of government.

“Above and beyond all forms of government, economic organizations, and diplomatic understandings - above all else, one might say - must reign that threefold harmony first outlined in Hellenism. In attempting to strike a balance among morality, the city, and the individual, Hellenism based that balance on conscience, solidarity, and personal instinct.... Only Hellenism could understand that balance had to be created on three levels, laboring to bring them into harmony by placing the intimate and mysterious call of the conscience on one level, the imperatives of communal duty on another, and the prolific freedom of individual instinct on the third."