Olympic Cavalcade

I CHAPTER X THE FIRST HIATUS IN 1914 the storm broke which had been blowing up ever since Kaiser Bill despatched insulting cables about the South African War and sent as much help in guns, munitions and volunteers to the foes whom we were fighting as he dared to for the moment, little thinking, as he did so, of the fine South African Brigade which would come to Europe against him. Anyway, the first shot fired in the First World War started a contest the like of which we had not seen upon the running-track or field lay-out. It let loose a ravening beast which devoured or maimed many an Olympic hero; it cut short the career of Germany as an athletic nation and it banished German athletes from the Olympic and practically every other inter– national arena for the space of three Olympiads. The holding of the Celebration of the VIth Olympic Games at Berlin, Germany, had been decided upon for 1916. Immediately thereon the Ger:.. man Imperial O~ympic Committee was formed; badges were i!).stituted for donors to the Management of 50 marks p.a. or 500 marks in a single pay– ment, which carried with it the title of 'Forderer', i.e., a Promoter of the efforts of the Imperial Committee. The German Imperial Committee for the Olympic Games, moreover, provided a distinction for a variety of 1 performances in the domain of physical exercises. These distinctions were to be acquired only by German subjects w~o had completed their eighteenth year, belonged to an associa– tion recognized by the G.I.C. for Olympic Games and who fulfilled the conditions of notifying to the Association, to which he or she belonged, the intention to compete for the distinction. Dr. Carl Diem, who took so large a part in the preparation for and the carrying out of the Olympic Games at Berlin, Germany, in 1936, was then editing Korperkultur, and was elected General Secretary for the VIth Olympiad. · . Meanwhile things were moving very fast in most other countries: A plenary session of the I.O.C. had taken place in 1913 in Lausanne for the purpose of studying questions under the heads of physiology and athletic psychology. In the U.S.A. the great Canadian sculptor, the late Dr. R. Tait McKenzie, was studying facial expressions of athletes and other such matters. . America was producing a batch of world beaters for the Games when t~ey should be revived. Sprinters such as C. W. Paddock and Allen Wood– rmg; distance runners such as Joie Ray; F. F. Loomis, the 400 metres hurdler; F. K. Foss, the pole vaulter; Dick Landon, a superb high jumper. 101