ABSTRACT
Between 1900 and 1939, international sport, though often presented in Britain as an autonomous activity, operated in a highly competitive world of nation states and conflicting ideologies. The international political environment, in conjunction with sport’s inherently competitive and divisive nature, ensured that major sporting events impinged on politics, even prompting governments, the press and public opinion in several countries to perceive meaningful links between the performance of, say, national football or Olympic teams and abstract considerations of national prowess. Although this practice was associated mainly with Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, the Daily Express, commenting in January 1929 à la Macaulay on recent exchanges between the Foreign Office and the FA, provided one British manifestation of this trend: The Consul’s brow was sad, and the Consul’s speech was low, And darkly looked he at the goal and darkly at the foe. ‘They surely score again’, he cried, ‘before the game doth cease’, ‘And if they once defeat our team what hope for Europe’s peace?’. 1
