Natives of Cherbourg, France, are accustomed to seeing a towering ocean liner anchor off their low-lying shore. Familiar to them are the fussy tenders that cuddle under the great ship's flanks to receive issuing streams of scurrying men.
But unfamiliar are the Gauls, seeing the much-laden tenders labor shoreward, with hearing a mighty shout go up to Heaven, with hearing an answering roar from the U. S. S. Pittsburgh, with seeing some 300 picked American athletes spring ashore to the blaring strains of Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here and The Stars and Stripes Forever.
America's 1924 Olympic team, safely landed, entrained for their chateaux at Rocquencourt and Colombes; pulled out of the Cherbourg station, flinging pennies, nickels, dimes to a curiosity-loud populace. Set down at their chateaux, they unpacked their luggage, recovered their land-legs, settled down to a fortnight of final conditioning. The swimmers went off to swim, gently at first. The runners loped, tentatively. The muscular mastodons perspired. Meanwhile another ocean liner moved out of New York harbor to plow her long furrow eastward over the Atlantic. Appropriately named the Homeric, this ship bore more of America's cohorts to Olympian conflict in the distant land. On her decks lounged the famed Yale crew who, with their slender octoreme, had been rushed aboard still panting from victorious exertions against Harvard on the Thames (TIME, June 30).
Other passengers on the Homeric focused much of their attention upon the chieftain of those eight blue-broidered heroes. Ed Leader, crafty coach, did not pass unobserved. "Al" Lindley, brainy, bespectacled stroke-setter, moved tall and silent down the decks. But the cynosure was James S. ("Jass") Rockefeller, Yale and Olympic crew captain.
Great-nephew of the wizard-of-oil, son of William G. Rockefeller, grandson of James Stillman, this stalwart scion of honorable American lines, gazed, brooding, on the horizon. Bending among his men on a mid-thwart, he had swept with them to shouting triumphs on home waters. Now he led them forth—the bronze-skinned ones—to conquer the oarsmen of the world, as warlike Menelaus led the bronze-greaved Argives against Troy of old. Would his heart and theirs be stout enough? Could he counsel and exhort them to his Nation's glory?
Arthur Brisbane, famed editorial-writer, pictured Rockefeller haranguing his men on The Psychology of Attempting the Impossible, a favorite and perfected theme of his astonishing great-uncle; pictured him stirring them with winged words, plucked bright and burning from the original Greek of the first Olympic leaders.
"Remit naught of your fierce ardor!" he may cry in mid-Seine.
Or, in the lockers ere the race begins:
"Subjects for disgrace, are ye not ashamed? Why stand ye here astounded, like fauns. . . ?"
Lurid flames in Rocquencourt village disturbed the sleeping athletes their first night in France. Many sprinted, for help, rescued victims, calmed demoralized inhabitants.