Politics and the Olympics: The Lesson of 1924
Peter Beck sets contemporary reportage of and reaction to the 1924 Olympics in the context of their times.
'To write this article is like delivering the funeral oration of the Olympic Games; not of these particular Games only... but of the whole Olympic movement... The ideal which inspired the re-birth of the Games [in 1896] was a high one - namely by friendly rivalry and sport to bind together the youth of all nations in a brotherhood so close and long that it would form a bulwark against the outbreak of all international animosities... [but] the world is not yet ripe for such a brotherhood'.
The above passage appeared in a report in The Times headed 'Olympic Games Doomed'. It was not a recent report but one written over fifty years ago, on July 22nd, 1924, during the Paris Olympics.
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