25 November 1892, Paris, France
This is an excerpt from a 1992 speech the manuscript of which was recently rediscovered. It sold for $8.8 million making it the most valuable sports memorabilia of all time.
There are some people you call utopians when they tell you that wars are bound to vanish and you are not totally wrong, but others believe that the occasions for wars will eventually disappear and to my mind this is not a utopia. It is clear and obvious that the telegraph, the railway, the telephone, the passionate research in the field of science, congresses, world fairs did more for peace than all the treaties and all the diplomatic conventions. Well, I do hope that athletics will do even more. Those who saw 30,000 people run under the rain to attend a football game will not regard this as an exaggeration. Let us export rowers, runners, fencers: this is the free trade of the future, and the day when it is part of the mores of old Europe the cause for peace will receive a powerful and new support. This is enough to encourage your humble servant to think now of the second half of this program. He hopes you will give him a hand as you have helped him so far, and with you he will be allowed to go on and build this grand and beneficial enterprise, on a basis true to the conditions of modern life: the reinstatement of the Olympic Games.
