IN the revived Olympic games, which are to be celebrated at St. Louis, under the auspices of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, there will be, in connection with other ancient and modern sports, a contest in archery. Contests in shooting with the bow were not usual in the Olympic games of ancient Greece, but they were included in the Isthmian and Nemean games, which, though less famous, were similar in all material respects to the great Olympic festival.
There are not many American archers, and it is hoped that the interest of a contest at St. Louis may be enhanced by the attendance of European contestants. The National Archery Association of the United States had selected St. Louis as the place for its next annual meeting before it had been definitely determined to include archery as one of the events of the Olympic games.
Colonel Robert Williams (L), Jr. W.H. Thompson
From a photograph
In considering archery as a modem field-sport, or viewing it in any light, the subject derives great interest from the historical view of the bow, its great antiquity, and its use as a military weapon from prehistoric times down to the beginning of the seventeenth century. For the last three centuries firearms have supplanted all other kinds of military weapons, and we seldom reflect that prior to this comparatively short period the bow and arrow was for fifty centuries one of the principal and most effective weapons with both civilized and barbaric nations. We now understand the term "artillery" to mean cannon-great ordnance, which may throw a projectile twenty miles or pierce the steel armor of a great ship; but before gunpowder came into use the term meant, specifically, the bow and arrow. This was the original artillery.