Start of the first heat of the 800-meter race, won by Meredith, who also won the final

Taipale, the Finn, who broke

the discus record

T

By

NO THE sympathetic spectator of the Olympic games of 1912, the one great memory, and that a gruesome one, will be the finish of the Marathon, with all that it connoted of agony and death. However, the tragic passing of the Portuguese Lazaro-the fault of no man, but of circumstances and perhaps of false ideals-cannot destroy the pleasant memories of a week filled with glories and thrills and picturesque details. For it is one lesser regret that Lazaro's collapse, and the mortal torture of twenty other men, marred at its finish the best-managed, the most successful, altogether the most moving, of all the Olympic revivals. And to that same sympathetic spectator the thing was an anticlimax; it had its great moment on the opening day. So fate orders our little efforts. Imagine, if you will, first Stockholm and then the Stadium. Stockholm-a combination of Paris without the commercialized vice and Venice without the color. We had heard of it beforehand as an interesting although remote capital; few were prepared to find it so beautiful and so innocently gay. It stands in a group of three thousand little, hilly, wooded islands. The oldest city occupied one of these islets; the new has spread right and left to other islands and to the mainland. So watercourses intersect it in every direction; one is continually driving across bridges, or coming sud

The South African runner, McArthur, winning the Marathon

denly out upon wharves crowded with grave, brick-tanned Scandinavian sailors and fringed with sturdy ice-breaking boats. One of these estuaries-it is, I believe, the

We numbered four hundred journalists in the press box, from no less than twenty-seven nations or sovereignties. Upon all these, and many more, the Swedes looked with the eyes of a remote nation which has fought no war for a hundred years and has little to fear from any man or power. They forebore-wonder of self-control-to raise prices. They cheered us, nation by nation, on the streets. They walked blocks out of their course to show us the way. Their soldierly Boy Scouts, taller and broader by inches than even our own boys of the same age, ran our errands, and returned the offer of tips with a shake of the head and a salute. When we made excursion among the canals of the three thousand islands, big country youths and girls stood at the pier heads to cast baskets of flowers before our bows. A courteous people-raising of hats between men is their universal custom-their courtesy goes down to the roots of good will. Such is Stockholm when she is receiving company.

Now remember that Stockholm, suburbs included, is a size smaller than San Francisco or Cincinnati, big enough to be a metropolis, little enough to retain the

façade line. The architecture has a Florentine quality: it is sturdy and useful, but light; and occasionally a round, bulging turret gives a touch of individuality and proves how near Sweden has been always to Russian influence. Here, in these early days of July, 1912, there was no night. The guidebooks had prepared our minds for that phenomenon; they had not prepared our eyes and our souls for its miracle. Dining at ten o'clock in the outdoor café before the opera-for Sweden keeps scandalous hours in summer-one looks out to see a lamplighter turning on a useless electric globe. It is then bright enough to read fine print out of doors. At half past ten it is growing dusky, and the water and sky take on a deep, violet-blue color which is like no other tint in nature. At eleven the evening star comes out, and it promises to grow dark. Just then east begins to lighten-twilight still on one horizon, and dawn on the other. By midnight, when you take cab or trolley or launch for home, the turn of the light has come; as you go to bed, everything has grown silvery with morning.

And this city is inhabited by 350,000 people, as admirable-on superficial contact at least-as one may ever find over this little globe. At home we know well the physical type-long of limb, broad of shoulder, grave of countenance, unbelievably pink-and-white of complexion. We know, also, the somewhat slow but solid mental cast, the admirable moral character, of this northern race. What we do not know is the ordered love of legitimate pleasure, the hospitality, the genuine good will, which marks the city-dwelling Swede. All the great races of the earth and every civilized nation had sent visitors to Stockholm in that week. Take, for example, the press-on that the Swedes kept statistics.

small city intimacy. To this add a royal family and a full-fledged court, and you have a situation both picturesque and humorous. For with all its rather stiff court etiquette, the royal family cannot keep sharply away from the populace in a capital so small and intimate. The middle-aged, respectable-looking King and his comfortably plump wife, the dark, boyish, attractive Crown Prince and his domestic English princess, that beautiful and sprightly Russian girl, the Princess Maria -familiar sight of them has killed curiosity in Sweden. I wondered, at first, why the Swedes did not cheergreat shouters that they are-when the royal family passed to the games in state procession. This was not due to the strong Socialist feeling in Stockholm, I was informed. It was because the Swedes must save their throats-if they cheered when royalty passed, they would be yelling all the time.

YET

THE IMPRESSIVE OPENING OF THE GAMES

ET when the royal family entered the state box on Saturday, July 6, to open the fifth modern revival of the Olympic games, it was another story with the populace. The King, his gold-laced officers and plumed ladies about him, emerged suddenly to a fanfare of trumpets. He was facing the green arena with its border of black cinder path, facing thirty thousand people in sober northern black and white, who packed the beautiful gray-red stadium to its top, facing the drooping, fluttering flags of all those nations who were his guests. Off came the straw hats as though a sudden wind had whirled up a bank of snow; spontaneously out burst that fierce, staccato: "Hurrah-rah-rah-rah!" of the north. And before it had died down, a choir, hidden in some far corner of the arena, began the national hymn.

Splendid singers these Swedes are, in common with all the northern people. It seemed that not only the choir but the whole audience had been trained and rehearsed.

A flutter broke into the applause of the finish; the audience was straining toward one of the towers at the calks of the big horseshoe. The band struck up; the gates swung open. The Danes appeared, led by a whiteclad, stiff, muscular gymnastic team, doing a goosestep behind protruding chests. After them marched their women of the north in white waists and short skirts-great, blond creatures, strong but fine of line; and finally their bare-legged athletes. They made a halfturn of the arena, and brought up facing the royal box. The Danes are a halfScandinavian people, first cousins to the Swedes; and there is long peace in the north. All the way the Swedes rose, section by section, and delivered their wolf bark. Behind the Danes came a flag strange even to our own waters, followed by a half dozen little dark men. It was the Chilian delegation. Though they had

come

furthest of all, though their very presence, all things considered, was an achievement for these Yankees of the south, the crowd scarcely noticed

upward. The tall towers at the calks of the horseshoe had blossomed with heralds in medieval scarlet and gold. On their long Viking trumpets they were blowing the greeting and defiance of his Scandinavian Majesty. And so, save for the procession past the royal box, the ceremony was ended.

This procession brought an incident which was for us Americans the keynote to the week's proceedings. Our team, in passing out, rounded that corner where the Swedish athletes stood wait

ing their turn. Man and woman alike, they dropped out of their stiff parade rest to cheer us again and again. Part of this, doubtless, rose from the bond of immigration which unites the two nations. Half of the Swedes have sent son or daughter, brother or sister, to our fields; the other half are writing letters to friends in Minneapolis and Chicago. Then, too, there was the tribute due to champions. Our reputation preceded us. Had not Ernie Hjertberg, who created the athletic revival in Sweden, learned his trade in the United States? But I like to think that some of it rose from admiration of our qualities and toleration of our defects-from real mutual understanding. Let our concerted cheering stand for the rest. The English newspapers called it conspicuous and barbarous; the French termed it "un cri ordonné, bizarre." But the Swedes liked it. Whenever, in the international gatherings at the out-of-door cafés, our youths emitted that yell, the Swedes answered with the wolf bark.

them for the Anglo-Saxons among us were cheering the tall, swinging Canadians with the red maple leaves on their chests. Then the gates opened to admit a banner uncatalogued among the flags of all nations. We aliens to the north wondered at the applause which it evoked, until we saw on the tribune beside it the word "Finland." Fief to Russia, this nation had been set apart from its tyrant by decision of the international committee. These fine, upstanding fellows with a touch of the primitive yellow in their blond complexions, these beautifully formed girls, had no banner of their own; and they elected to carry the flag of their gymnasium clubs. Dramatically, it brought to these Scandinavians that nightmare terror under which the north has lain for three centuries long. Nothing else could explain the spontaneous cheering which brought the audience standing.

And then-Johnnie Hallahan, yell leader, was on his feet in the north stand, and our American "university club section" had risen to deliver itself as follows:

"Rah, rah, ray!

U. S. A.!
A-M-E-R-I-C-A!"

The crowd craned and murmured. Some laughed; some applauded tentatively. This was the first time that the north had heard our undignified if inspiring college rooting, and they scarcely knew how to take it. These diverse sounds blended with the general cheering due a champion when the front ranks of the American athletes swung through the gates. Our men wore for the occasion not track uniforms, but blue coats, white trousers and shoes, and straw hats. As they came down the line, section after section rising to greet them, the Americans in the grand stand experienced a momentary disappointment. The men of the martial nations which preceded them, conscripts all, had marched with the formal carriage of European military tactics. Ours, though they kept good step and alignment, glided along in any fashion, their arms and shoulders keeping swing with their walk. It took a second thought to convince us that we were right and Europe wrong. This free-andeasy gait, when performed by a six-foot youth in per

I

The New York traffic policeman, McDonald, who won the shot-put

in street clothes. So short is humanity of larger imagination that their appearance created scarcely any stir. Yet this was the remnant of the people to whose original and permanent sense of beauty in man we owe these games; theirs was the thought, strong enough to survive fifteen centuries of torpor. Nor, indeed, was there any stir save of amusement when four grinning brown committeemen and two proud little athletes entered with the sun banner of Japan. Here, beside the little squad representing that most significant race which lost its domination twenty centuries ago, stood the other little squad from the race which made its offer of domination only yesterday. Perhaps, as in these evenings of the summer north, here was twilight meeting dawn.

Kolehmainen, the Finn, winning the 10,000-meter run

Now a thousand picked athletes of the world were ranged at parade rest; now there were two thousand and three thousand. The row of banners stretched from end to end of the arena. All was ready; with "Hurrah," "hurrah," "rah-rahray,' "bravo," "hoch," "banzai," "skoel," and plain howling, we representatives of twenty-seven sovereignties had cheered to exhaustion. Quite suddenly, in the midst of that clatter which follows applause, rose a strain of music so deep and solemn that it hushed the crowd. The thick-massed teams of Scandinavians down on the field were singing Luther's hymn-"Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott." The Catholic nations of the south, who know not this battle song of their adversary, stood nevertheless with bared heads, while Scandinavians, Germans, Englishmen, and even the unmusical Americans, joined in. I can only report this fact as a fact: I cannot convey the solemn thrill which it carried. And out of the ensuing silence came a big northern voice, praying-the court chaplain.

A British army chaplain prayed in English. When he had finished and the hats went on, they must come off again for the Crown Prince. He had stepped into the shot-putting circle before the banners, and was reading an address to the royal box. The King answered in a good voice which reached every corner of the stands. This formality over, the audience sang again the National Hymn. At its conclusion, the fanfare of trumpets floated again across

the field. All heads craned

What we did in the games the world has already heard, and is preparing to forget. In the preliminary heats the white American uniform with the national shield at the breast would flash out almost monotonously from the struggling bunch; and an American runner, nicely calculating the distance necessary to qualify him for the finals, would throw up his arms at the line. There came the day of first blood, when Craig and Meyer and Lippincott strode away from the striving South African, Patching, in the hundred meters, and sent up three American flags on the winning poles. Another day, and that sturdy schoolboy, Meredith, had pulled two team mates across the line for a world's record. That, from a technical point of view, was the performance of the meet. Wherever we congratulated an English point winner, he was sure to return courtesy by congratulating us on that eight hundred. It brought together the German Braun, whom many Englishmen had pronounced the best middledistance runner in the world; Sheppard, our veteran of twenty-nine and winner of a thousand races; Davenport, much fancied by the Western delegation; and this newcomer, Meredith.

Braun, run

In such a race there is no teamwork; each man makes the running for himself. Sheppard, judge of pace that he is, chose to take the lead and to drag the field around at a world-record gait. ning with a beautiful, easy stride, followed at his heels; behind, five other Americans and Brock, the Canadian, struggled and changed places. Now one American quit and another dropped back of the running, but three Americans and the Canadian went on. At the last turn Braun shot his bolt. He tore away from Sheppard, en

Meredith, the American runner breaking the recora in the 800 meters. The second and third men, Sheppard and

Davenport, both Americans, also broke the record

9

tered the stretch like an easy winner, and the American stands groaned in agony. Suddenly the strength went out of him. One American and another had passed him; the maple leaf of Canada showed even with the black eagle on his chest. Relieved, we looked again at the Americans. But it was not Sheppard leading now-it was the dark young Meredith. With his shoulder just before Sheppard's, his head bobbing, he raced toward the line. And just then another American shield flashed past the black eagle. It was Davenport, who had come out of a pocket at the turn and started a spurt like a sprinter's. He pulled up on Sheppard; he all but caught him at the tape. Before the time went up we knew that this must be one of the historic races; afterward we found that all three had beaten the world's record.

Then, too, the American team had its upsets. The

Reidpath winning the 400

meters for America

Swedes used to say, with their gently insinuating politeness, that these were good for us. They saved us from conceit. There was the high jump, for example. Horine, the champion, worn out by too long a season, gained but third place. Richards had to jump higher than ever before in his life to beat a German.

That 1,500 meters brought another immortal race-though it was heartbreak, too. Consider whom we had - John Paul Jones, world's record holder in the mile; Sheppard, old Olympic winner at the distance, and Kiviat, no less in expert esteem than the other two. Against them the

only finalist who seemed to have a chance was Jackson, a long, rangy, Oxford blue. The field ran bunched until the turn. There Jones swung out and made his try. We settled back in confidence; it was all over. But another runner had swung and sprinted, and he wore the black-bordered trunks and the Union Jack of England. He passed Jones; he passed the rest; he came straight down the stretch, throwing his feet far back in the desperation of a supreme effort; he staggered over the tape and tumbled on the grass, a sick and worn young Briton, but an easy winner. In that finish Jackson had fulfilled the best traditions of old British sportsmanship. Tear down the walls of Oxford for him!

Yet neither Meredith nor Jackson, nor our perfect half-breed athlete, Thorpe, who accounted so easily for the pentathlon and decathlon, nor Craig, who won the sprints as though the rest were tied, was the individual sensation of the meet. That honor goes to little Finland, with her pathetic, alien banner. We had heard in advance about the Kolehmainen brothers, and especially young Hannes, the twenty-two-year-old holder of the Northern distance records. But we had heard also of Rau and Braun, the German champions; and they, when put to the test, lacked that last ounce of strength and finish which marks American runners. They made worthy opponents and no more. Kolehmainen was different. In his very first heat, at the trying ten thousand meters, he loped away like a professional running against schoolboys. He is a small, golden-skinned Finn, with a touch of the primitive race not only in his complexion but in his features, yet a pleasing-looking boy withal. As he neared the tape, winner by whatever distance he desired, he used to acknowledge the applause with a confident smile and a jaunty little half salute which said: "This is perfectly easy." He distanced our Indian, Tewanina, in the finals of the ten thousand, and only in the five thousand did anyone give him a race. Here Bouin, the French champion, extended him, and no more. When he rounded the stadium in the cross-country run he stood for some time at the finish post waiting with languid curiosity to see who would be the second man home.

Serious little Finland, nation without a flag! To this subject people of two million ice-bound and op

pressed souls, rather than to our rich, sovereign ninety million, belong the real honors of the fifth Olympic revival. Before the week was over she suffered deep humiliation. Russia, stung perhaps by the applause of that first day, must have moved through diplomatic channels. We saw the banner of the gymnasium club no more. Finland's victories in the distance runs, the javelin and the gymnastic competitions were proclaimed by a Russian flag with an added blue pennant labeled "Finland." Finally the Swedish singing societies, rendering the old Scandinavian songs before the King, sang "Björneborgarne's March," common property of all Scandinavia, but especially identified with the Finnish wars against Russia. The Swedish crowd put great meaning into its applause. Diplomacy must have moved again, for when next day the flags announced results in the discus, even the blue pennant had disappeared, and the naked flag of Russia went up the staff. Finland was the crippled sister at Stockholm, the pathetic relief to this drama.

Athletics in Finland belong to the people; the universities ignore them, the gentry despise them. Nikander, who took the javelin championship from the Swedes, is a carpenter; their winning wrestlers follow various humble, useful occupations. To send this team to Stockholm, they needed four thousand dollars. It was raised, penny on penny, from farmers and laboring men. Finns transplanted to Stockholm gave them lodging; the Kolehmainen brothers, for example, were guests of a blacksmith. This family comes from a small, unpronounceable town on the borders of the Arctic Circle.

they could run in spikes. When their fame grew too great for their native village, they used to sit up all night in third-class coaches en route to the meets at Helsingfors and their mother would put them up, on the eve of their journey, enough cold lunch for three days' rations. Hannes is a bricklayer. Less by conviction than by habit of early poverty, he eats no meat. He trains on long runs to and from his work, and on a severe system of massage. That is another story. The person whom he hailed with his half-arm salutes was his friend George, the rubber of a Turkish bath, who, for the glory of Finland, has been giving him free massage all these years. Tear down the walls for Hannes Kolehmainen! Like Jackson, the Oxford blue, this bricklayer is all man The arena in the Stadium had become by now a threering circus. On mats over by one corner of the infield an infinite procession of Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Bel

gian, Hungarian, and Austrian Græco-Roman wrestlers pawed and rolled and grunted morning and afternoon. In the foreground, teams of male and female gymnasts performed evolutions after the light Swedish or heavy German fashion. On the cinder track the runners loped off their races; and, likely as not, a field event, such as the high jump or the javelin throw, would add a (Concluded on page 26)

the left-opening the games. The

"X" marks the

American team

utt's

I

"SEATTLE, July 9, 1912.

mendacity of Jack Falstaff, whom he greatly resembles, swears that he is the only progressive.

"Why should the third party set out with the mistake of voluntarily surrendering their ship to the pirates? Or why submit to be kicked out of the Republican party, when the Taft wing does not comprise one-quarter of its total membership? It would certainly delight the Taft people to see the third party take a new name and surrender the old name to them, together with Lincoln and the war record, and all the accumulated assets of more than fifty years of history, and they would chortle and chuckle with glee.

"I don't believe in giving these people any such advantages. Yours truly, JOHN L. Gow."

How many are there who share this old soldier's feeling? Very few, probably. This devotion to a name, either Democratic or

Republican, died out with the passing of the

generation who remembered the Civil War and shared its passions. A man who was born on the day Lincoln was elected will be fifty-two years old next November. At the Michigan Third party convention, held "under the oaks" at Jackson the other day. six venerable men participated who were present at the organization of the Republican party on the same spot in 1856.

this commotion, rather than less, and those who are disturbed by it might as well try to get used to the noise.

ONE TEST

OF COURSE, it's very easy to beat the

devil around the stump about those stolen delegates. Omitting the more impor

tant issues involved in the contest, consider, merely for its own interest, one minor aspect. In the following words from the recent Taft statement a partial explanation of the Texas decision is made:

"Of the 245 counties, there were 99 counties in which the total Republican vote was but 2,000. The National Committee and the Committee on Credentials and the convention, after the fullest investigation, decided that these 99 counties in which

the Republican vote was so small, and in which there was no Republican party, no convention, no primary, no organization, was not the proper source for a proxy to give a vote equal to that to be cast by the other 146 counties, in which there was a Republican organization, and in which primaries or conventions were held. . . . The two tribunals that heard the case decided that they should deduct the 99 votes from the total of 245 and give the representation to those who controlled the majority of the remainder."

The National Committee seated the Taft

delegates by disfranchising utterly ninetynine counties that had a Republican vote of only two thousand. If that same method were applied to all the Southern delegates. Taft would have lost fully a third of them. Consider South Carolina: The total Republican vote (for Taft in 1908) was 3.962. This was in the entire State, including Charleston

"This is an agitated and expectant age."

Yet, really, there was very little stirring in those early Victorian forties; to-day he

would need to search the bottom of his vocabulary for words to express the distress

of those who, both in England and America. consider it more comfortable to travel a beaten path than to find truth or do justice. The Standpatter class is composed of two groups: those who, either personally or as a class, find bread and butter (or, more

likely, valets and yachts) on the side of resistance to progress, and those honest souls limitations. John Morley described them: who are Standpatters because of intellectual

"His inexhaustible patience of abuses that only torment others; his apologetic word for beliefs that may not be so precisely true as one might wish, and institutions that are not altogether so useful as one might think possible; his cordiality toward progress and improvement, in a general way, and his coldness or antipathy to each progressive proposal in particular; his pygmy hope that life will one day become somewhat better, punily shivering by the side of his gigantic conviction that it might

Republican counties, and you will leave fourfifths of the State with less than two thou

sand Republican votes. But Taft voted 16 delegates from South Carolina. In Mississippi the Republican vote for the entire State was only a little over twice two thousand, Mississippi. The truth is that in four-fifths 4.363. But Taft voted 17 delegates from Taft's committee, "no Republican party, no of the South there is, in the language of Mr. convention, no primary, no organization." And the fact that one-fourth of every Republican National Convention is composed of fungus delegates, who exist for the sake of fraud and make fraud inevitable, is one of the best reasons why that party should cease to exist.

A FACT LOST SIGHT OF

THE stealing of the delegates was im

portant, of course, but discussion of the technicalities of that operation ought not to obscure an even more important question of morals. It is not denied that Roosevelt carried the primaries overwhelmingly in such States as Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, and Ohio, and that he was the choice of fourfifths of the rank and file of the party. Taft and his managers were in the position of finding some way to circumvent the will of the people. Whether, in doing so, they got outside of precedent and statute is, after all, of minor importance. These words were written by Stanford Conant of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin:

"Surely it is less dangerous to give a third term to one whom the people wish than to force a second term for one whom the people do not wish. . . . It is a question of morals."