As the runners rounded the turn, just before handing off their batons to the anchors, it was obvious that the United States should win the relay. As Eric Liddell reached back and grabbed the baton from his British teammate, he was a full seven meters behind Horatio Fitch. Eric threw his head back and thrashed his arms back and forth at his side in his odd running style. As he did so, he gathered speed. By the time he reached the first turn, Eric was gaining on Horatio Fitch. Down the back straight he pulled even with him. But on the second turn, Horatio managed to hold off Eric’s challenge and stay just in front, though not by much. But as they entered the home straight and headed for the finish line, Horatio Fitch had no answer for Eric’s final burst of speed. Eric began to pull away and crossed the finish line four meters ahead of Horatio Fitch. The crowd went wild.
By the time Eric got back to Scotland, everyone had heard about his latest victory. More people than ever wanted to hold parties in his honor. For the time being, he was Scotland’s greatest sports star.
A week after arriving back in Edinburgh, Eric was at yet another dinner in his honor. This time he had invited his old coach, Tom McKerchar, to attend with him. During his speech, Eric told the audience how much Tom McKerchar had helped and encouraged him when he had been a green athlete fresh out of high school. When the speech was over, the crowd clapped and cheered. Tom McKerchar stood and bowed and then sat down again. Everyone expected Eric to do the same. But as the applause died away, Eric continued to stand with a serious look fixed on his face. The audience grew silent. Did Eric Liddell have something else to say?
Eric cleared his throat and began softly. “Before I sit down, there is one more thing I would like to tell you all. It has been a wonderful experience to compete in the Olympic Games and to bring home a gold medal. But since I have been a young lad, I have had my eyes on a different prize. You see, each one of us is in a greater race than any I have run in Paris, and this race ends when God gives out the medals. It has always been my intention to be a missionary, and I have just received word that I have been accepted as a chemistry teacher at the Anglo-Chinese college in Tientsin, China. From now on, I will be putting my energy into preparing to take up that position.”
The room was completely silent. People stared at Eric with open mouths; the impact of what he had just said was slowly sinking in. Scotland’s greatest athlete was giving up running to go to China! Within hours, every newspaper in the country would carry the stunning news.
Eric was glad the news was finally out. Now everyone knew of his decision, and he could busy himself making plans to get to China. While he looked forward to teaching chemistry and being a coach at the college, more than just teaching and coaching students, Eric wanted to help them spiritually. But to be more effective doing that he felt he needed some extra training. After communicating futher with the Anglo-Chinese college in Tientsin, it was decided that he should stay one more year in Scotland and study theology at the Congregational college in Edinburgh.
Of course, study did not keep Eric, being who he was, busy all the time. Eric managed to fit in several extensive Christian speaking tours during that year. He toured England several times, and everywhere he went, huge crowds turned out to hear him. He also traveled to Germany, where the British Army still occupied tracts of the Rhineland it had captured during World War I.
Everything Eric did, whether taking part in a charity run or playing a fun game of rugby, was written about in the newspapers the following day. Nothing about him seemed too trivial to report on. People all over Scotland seemed to want to read about everything Eric was up to. Elsa McKechnie was one such person. She was a fourteen-year-old girl who followed what Eric was doing with great interest. Every night she would scour the newspapers to see if there was anything new to read about him. She would discuss all she found out about Eric with her friends at the George Watson Ladies College in Edinburgh. Nearly all the girls at the school had the same interest in Eric as Elsa. He was, after all, a local hero, not to mention a very charming young man.
One day Elsa McKechnie had an idea. Why not form an Eric Liddell Fan Club? She discussed the idea with her friends at school, and they all agreed it would be a great thing to do. Elsa quickly made up rules for the new club. To become a member, a person had to pass an oral exam about the life of Eric Liddell. Once a person passed the test, she was entitled to use one page of the club’s scrapbook to write down a poem or some thoughts on Eric. In return, the members were each given a photo of Eric which they promised to display in a place of honor.
Elsa McKechnie wrote to Eric to tell him about the fan club and ask whether he would give his permission to make it the official Eric Liddell Fan Club. She even asked him to come to dinner at her house. As soon as Eric got her letter, he wrote to Elsa, giving her permission to run the one and only Official Eric Liddell Fan Club and accepting her invitation to dinner.
Elsa was too excited to say much during the meal, but she watched everything Eric did and tried to remember every word he said so that she could report to the other members of the club at a special meeting she had called for the following day. When Eric left the house after dinner, Elsa drained the rest of the tea from the cup he had been drinking from and dried the tea leaves left in the bottom. She tucked them inside an envelope. They became one of her most prized possessions. Such was the impression Eric Liddell left on young girls in Scotland!
Time was passing quickly, though. Before Eric knew it, his year at the Congregational college was over, and he was packing for China. Newspapers counted down the weeks until July 13. One paper even printed a cartoon of Eric running in black shorts and a clergyman’s collar! Many people in Scotland understood why he was leaving, and they wanted to encourage him any way they could. Eric’s last official running event was at the Scottish AAA Championships at Hampden Park, Glasgow. When people heard that Eric Liddell was entered in the 100-, 220-, and 440-yard races, twelve thousand spectators showed up to cheer him on. Eric thrilled his fans by winning all three races.
Not only did Eric’s admirers come to see him run one last time before he left Scotland, but enormous crowds came to hear him speak in churches as well. As many as a thousand people had to be turned away sometimes because there was no more room in the church where he was speaking. When the time came for him to leave, there was hardly a person in all Scotland who didn’t know where Eric was going and why. Just as when he had returned from the Olympic Games in Paris, an endless round of luncheons and dinners was arranged for people to say good-bye to Eric, who graciously attended them all.
Finally, Monday, July 13, 1925, arrived. At 5 p.m. Eric picked up his suitcases and looked around his room one last time. His friends had arranged for him to get to Waverley Railway Station, but they had given him no details about the arrangements. As Eric opened the door and stepped out into the warm evening, his mouth fell open in shock. In front of him was a carriage, much like the one that had taken him from St. Giles Cathedral to the vice-chancellor’s house for dinner a year ago. However, this carriage was different in one big way. Instead of being drawn by two horses like the previous carriage, this carriage was led by two teams of students and friends, who held the shaft in their hands, ready to pull the carriage with Eric in it all the way to the station.
Amid cheering and whistling, Eric climbed into the carriage, and off the men trotted. The teams pulled the carriage up Hope Terrace, along Clerk Street and then Nicholson Street, over the bridge, and on to the station. All along the route, people had gathered to say farewell to Scotland’s most famous and well-loved athlete. Some people even burst into tears as Eric passed by; others waved and whistled loudly. Traffic ground to a halt as the crowd surged forward for one last glimpse of their hero. Drivers honked their car horns and counted themselves lucky to be caught in a traffic jam caused by people wanting to honor Eric Liddell.
Finally, the carriage arrived at the station, and Eric began a torturous round of good-byes. No one was sure when they would see him again, and so many people wanted to shake his hand and wish him well that it was impossible to get to everyone.
As the train puffed into the station, the crowd began to sing hymns, and Eric joined in with them. He was still singing as he climbed aboard and found himself a seat. He pulled the window open and began to wave to everyone. As he waved good-bye to his friends and said good-bye to his life in Edinburgh, he knew he was saying good-bye to something else, too. From now on, he would no longer be living in a country where he was a national hero and recognized in every corner store. He was about to become a stranger in a strange and troubled land.
Chapter 7
A Troubled Land
Eric settled into his seat for the trip to London. As the train rattled along, he began catching up on his reading. He especially wanted to reread some of the letters his father had written him about what to expect when he got to Tientsin. The letters were not lighthearted but told of the huge problems facing China in 1925.
Eric’s father told about the waves of fighting and revolution that had swept over the country in the eighteen years since Eric had left China as a five-year-old. In 1911, the Qing Dynasty, which had ruled China for two hundred sixty-seven years, collapsed. Following its collapse, a new Republic of China was declared, and a new government was set up. But the new government was wracked with divisions and turmoil. So, like many other times in Chinese history when there wasn’t a strong government in control, local warlords, using their private armies, began to exert their control over certain areas. For several years now, these local warlords and other political factions had been locked in a bitter struggle for control of China.
Eric’s father had written that there were basically three groups involved in the struggle. There were the local warlords, the Nationalists, or the Kuomintang, as they called themselves, and a new group, the Communists, who patterned themselves after the Bolsheviks, who had seized power in Russia and transformed that country into the Soviet Union. The Kuomintang was the largest and most powerful group and found most of its support in the cities. It was also recognized as the rightful government of China, though it by no means controlled the country. The Communists were a small but growing group, and most of their support came from the rural areas in the south of China. As these different factions fought for control in various regions, it was not uncommon for some villages to change hands between a warlord, the Communists, and the Nationalists five or six times a year. Each time an army passed through a village, the village’s occupants had their homes robbed and their food supplies stolen. When an army marched through the countryside, it would steal the crops from the field and trample those not ready to harvest so that the other groups couldn’t get their hands on them. This in turn had led to famine.
Apart from the fighting itself, China’s other enemy was foreign influence. The people of China had been humiliated by the British during the First Opium War of 1839–42. China had many goods that Great Britain wanted to trade for, but the Chinese wanted nothing except silver from the British in return for them. When the British tried to force opium on the Chinese instead of silver as payment for the goods they wanted, the emperor had refused. He ordered all opium destroyed. This in turn angered the British, who began a war with China. The British easily won, and China was forced to sign a treaty to end the war. Not only did the treaty allow the British to import opium into China, but it also opened up a number of coastal cities where foreigners could live and trade. The treaty left the Chinese people feeling weak, powerless, and very angry.
