"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play…it is war minus the shooting."
Eric Liddell: the making of an athlete
Return to the book list for titles beginning with 'e'.
Eric Liddell: the making of an athlete and the training of a missionary, D P Thompson, The Eric Liddell Memorial Committee, Glasgow 1945 (40 pages)
The booklet is the best primary source of material on Liddell as it is written by DP Thompson who knew Eric well from his student days onward. Moreover that it was written 25 years or more before any of the others, makes it much closer to the facts.
Thompson records his first meeting with Liddell and his request that Eric join him in an evangelistic enterprise: "I made my request as simply, as directly and as forcibly as I could. There was a moment's silence while Eric looked down at the ground and considered his reply. Then with that smile that we were to come to know so well, he raised his head and said quietly, "All right,I'll come". (Page 16)
On Eric's decision not to take part in the 1924 Olympic 100 metres because it was on Sunday, Thompson records simply. "He said quietly but firmly, 'I'm not running. That decision there could be no hope of changing; it was based on principles from which he never deviated by a hairsbreadth". (Page 21)
Thompson records the incident in which Liddell was given the paper with the Scripture verse in Paris as follows: "There is one very revealing incident of the great race at Paris which we owe to Liddell himself. I have heard him tell it often. Just before the final, a man came up and slipped something into his hand. It was a piece of paper, and on it were written the words of Scripture: "Them that honour me I will honour" (1 Samuel ii:30). From what Eric has told me, I believe we owe a debt to that unnamed well-wisher greater than can ever be repaid." (Page 24). Thompson's account is incomplete and he later clarified and corrected it.
A weakness in Thompson's writing is that he did not value Eric's athletics beyond the platform it game him to proclaim the gospel. This is illustrated by the following sentence: "I pass over Eric's subsequent athletic achievements before he left for China;they were all of a piece with all that had gone before". (Page 31)