26.2 - The Incredible True Story of the Three Men Who Shaped The London Marathon. John Bryant
all in the French and German papers; they tell these lies. Conan Doyle, he’s right, he’s been out here. Have you seen what he’s writing? That’s a man who knows the truth.’
The lies that so angered Conan Doyle were certainly getting worldwide coverage. Typical was a report in January 1902 from the Boer General, Jan Smuts, later Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa:
Lord Kitchener has begun to carry out a policy in both the Boer republics of unbelievable barbarism and gruesomeness which violates the most elementary principles of the international rules of war. Almost all farmsteads and villages in both republics have been burned down and destroyed. All crops have been destroyed. All livestock which has fallen into the hands of the enemy has been killed or slaughtered. The basic principle behind Lord Kitchener’s tactics had been to win, not so much by direct operations against fighting commandos, but rather indirectly by bringing the pressure of war against defenceless women and children.
The truth was that even in Britain, prominent voices were speaking out against the slaughter. David Lloyd George, who later served as the British Prime Minister during World War I, vehemently denounced the carnage during a speech in Parliament on 18 February 1901. He quoted from a letter by a British Officer: ‘We move from valley to valley lifting cattle and sheep, burning and looting and turning out women and children to weep in despair beside the ruin of their once beautiful homesteads.’
One Irish Nationalist MP, John Dillon, spoke out angrily against the British policy of shooting Boer prisoners of war. On 26 February 1901, he made public a letter by a British Officer: ‘The orders in this district from Lord Kitchener are to burn and destroy all provisions, forage etc. and seize cattle, horses and stock of all sorts wherever found and to leave no food in the houses of the inhabitants, and the word has been passed around privately that no prisoners are to be taken.’
Dillon produced other letters from soldiers in the Liverpool Courier and the Wolverhampton Express and Star alleging that wounded Boers and prisoners would be shot. His denunciation of the war carried special significance: while British troops robbed the Boers of their national freedom in South Africa, Dillon was implying that the British government also held the people of Southern Ireland under colonial rule against their will.
One crusading English woman, Emily Hobhouse, alerted the world to the horrors of the prisoners’ camps. ‘In some camps,’ she reported, ‘two and sometimes three different families live in one tent. Most have to sleep on the ground. These people will never, ever forget what has happened. The children have been the hardest hit. They wither in the terrible heat and as a result of insufficient and improper nourishment. To maintain this kind of camp means nothing less than murdering children.’
To men like Conan Doyle and Halswelle, such charges were outrageous: they were fighting for King and Empire, a cause they believed in, against an enemy who used dubious tactics. ‘It’s the Boers that started this,’ the men would say to Halswelle. ‘We take too many prisoners. The trouble with you, Halswelle, is that you want to fight like you play cricket. There aren’t any bloody umpires out here! They’ll get you, if you don’t watch it. We don’t mind a scrap, but these Boers have got to learn to stand and fight, not cower behind their women and children.’
The men who shared the barracks with Halswelle were merely echoing the views of their leader. ‘The Boers would never stand up to a fair fight,’ complained Lord Kitchener, and it was this view that angered so many in the British ranks.
For the success of his sixpenny pamphlet rebutting the charges of war crimes, Arthur Conan Doyle was knighted on 9 August 1902. Intriguingly, he considered refusing the offer because he said he wrote the work out of conviction and not to gain a title. Conan Doyle wrote to his mother, explaining that he was reluctant to take it up, but friends and relatives, and above all his mother, persuaded him that he should accept the knighthood and that it was a suitable way to honour his patriotism.
Back in London, the gossipmongers took a more cynical view, however. They said that the King was an avid Sherlock Holmes’ fan and that he’d put Conan Doyle’s name on the honours list to encourage him to write more stories. Whatever the reason for the knighthood, His Majesty and many thousands of his subjects must have been delighted when, in 1903, the Strand Magazine started serialising The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
Back in London, Halswelle’s mother was equally delighted. ‘There’s no finer writer in the land,’ she wrote to her son, ‘than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.’
Dorando Pietri’s sporting career was almost over before it began. Always a boy of sudden enthusiasms, and ever eager to follow the latest fashion, he had simply fallen in love with cycling. He had seized on bike racing as a way to make his mark and be somebody, as a route to success and standing in Carpi. The seductiveness of the machines, the scent of the oil, the bright clothing, the cut of the racing jerseys, the way his heart beat when lining up for the start – he loved it all. He also enjoyed talking about the sport and reading about it in the papers after a race.
The members of La Patria were enthusiastic supporters of this infant sport. They pointed out that it was healthy as it got you outdoors and just about anyone could do it. Newspapers such as Luce gave plenty of space to cycling too. Their editors reckoned the bicycle was a way of emancipating the working classes in northern Italy, where the poor had been forced to spend hours trudging their way to work from their homes and hamlets outside the cities. Now, because of the bicycle, they could reach their places of work quickly and cheaply. For Dorando, the bike was far more than just a cheap way to travel: it gave him speed and a way to prove that he too could be a champion.
A particularly dangerous form of cycle racing, especially in the early years of the twentieth century, was a ride paced by motorbikes, as neither they nor the bicycles were up to much mechanically. But Dorando was certainly keen on the sport – it all seemed so wonderful at the time. He savoured the moments at the start of the race when he was held motionless in the saddle, his head dipped deep over the handlebars, while the motorbikes coughed and spluttered their way into life.
‘They’ll pace you, they’ll shelter you,’ his friends shouted at him. ‘All you have to do is ride till you drop – you’ll move faster than anyone could dream.’
In mid-August 1904, Dorando found himself in a two-man race behind men perched on two 2.5 horsepower Peugeots. Once he got going, the feeling of speed was sensational, as if men had never gone this fast but now you could do it all under your own power. The closer you could get to the motorbike in front, the more you would benefit from the shelter and the faster you might go.
Inevitably, with the crude machines of the time, trouble was waiting around every corner, and on the fifth lap of this 25km race, Dorando clipped the back of the pacing motorbike. Both riders were sent sprawling and he was taken to hospital. Luckily, although he was covered in blood and scrapes and was bruised through to the bone, nothing was broken. Even so, he was a painful mess and remained in a hospital bed in Modena for eight days.
The experience gave him plenty of time to think. Maybe his friend Tullio was right after all and he should give up cycling. Perhaps he should see if he couldn’t make his mark as a runner. They had been saying he was in the wrong event, so maybe the bruises were telling him something.
There were other reasons, too, that made him uneasy about bicycle racing. He had read about men who could push their body way beyond all human endurance – a thought that excited him, but he had also heard about some of the methods they used to tap these powers. After all, the great cycling boom was already sweeping Europe and a man might win fame and a sizeable fortune because of his powers on a bike. Why waste your life labouring or down the mines if you could earn far more this way? And already there were trainers haunting the racing circuits to show how it might be done.
One such man