At the end of the nineteenth century, sports were an activity for a handful of elite young men. Fifty years later, sports fields could be found in every corner of the country and gymnastics was a compulsory part of school curricula. Another fifty years later, the Dutch were also fanatically involved in physical education and sports outside of school and clubs. This unstoppable rise was partly the result of the work of a motley crew of sports and exercise propagandists. They wrote libraries full of books and traveled all over the country to explain the importance of this new social phenomenon to the general public and politicians. Indeed, for these propagandists, sport was much more than a pleasurable leisure activity; for them, sport was an instrument at the service of a higher goal: restoration of national glory. The history of sports and exercise education in the Netherlands. In Volkskracht, Jelle Zondag reconstructs the rise and spread of sports, physical education and sporting exercise practices in the Netherlands. Using the history of movement education, the Dutch Olympic Committee and the Dutch scouting movement, he explains how sport could grow into a ubiquitous phenomenon.