Decline
The Greeks were unable to keep the schedule for 1910. On the one hand problems in the Balkans made things difficult, but on the other, the modern Greeks found out the ancient Greeks were right: A two year interval was too short. Where there had been a gap of six years before Athens 1906 (because of the almost all-American nature of the 1904 St Louis games), a gap of two years after London 1908 did not leave people enough time to prepare.
With Athens 1910 a failure, the faith in Athens diminished, and as a result Athens 1914 got even less support. And then World War I started, and any further Intercalated Games had to wait until after the war. But after the war was over it had been more than a decade since Athens 1906, and the idea of Intercalated Games was given up entirely.
Read more about this topic: Intercalated Games
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Considered physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually reduces his strength. The effect of ugliness can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever anyone feels depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with ugliness, they rise with beauty.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)