Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1940, Page 166

LE NORD
160
the war just over, Finnish athletics gave memorable proof of
an inexhaustible reservoir of power that day.
In the present circumstances, it is interesting to look over
the preliminary list of nations entered for the 1940 Olympic
Games. The following states had sent notice of participation in
the following order: Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Italy,
Roumania, Palestine, Switzerland, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Costa
Rica, Sweden, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Portugal, Greece, Hol-
land, Germany, the United States of America, Hungary, Argen-
tine, Salvador, Estonia, Australia, Brazil, Haiti, India, Iceland,
Latvia, Malta, Bolivia, Egypt, Canada, Cuba, Poland, Bulgaria,
South Africa, France, Eire, Ceylon, Mexico, China, Spain, the
Philippines, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Columbia,
New Zealand and Finland.
The Organization Committee of the XII Olympic Games was
prepared to receive about 4000 competitors and about 100,000
spectators from abroad. The problem of housing competitors had
been solved by the building of a colony of dwelling houses, to
provide accommodation for 3200 male competitors, in the Kápylá
suburb of Helsinki. Work was begun on this Olympic Village
in January 1939, and the 23 brick houses it comprised were
completed in the autumn of the same year. The intention had
been to utilize these dwellings for housing families of small means
after the Games were over, but as matters turned out they had
to be devoted to that purpose already in the spring of 1940.
¥omen competitors would have been housed in the new training
college for nurses in the Meilahti district of Helsinki, now being
used as a hospital for war invalids. Competitors in the equestrian
events and the military pentathlon were to have been housed
in the new Cadet School at Santahamina.
The housing of the large public expected at the Games gave
the section to which this task was entrusted a good deal of trouble
and demanded serious thought. Owing to the inadequacy of the
hotels, plans had been made to quarter spectators on private
families, and even to use mass billets and tents. It was also
proposed to use large liners as “floating hotels”. The German
visitors, for instance, would all have used this type of accommoda-
tion. By August 1939 the section had entered in its card register
lodging for 32,054 persons in private houses. Accommodation for
a further 30,000 or so had been secured in mass billets. The
section closed down temporarily on September 15th 1939.