The Fighting Spirit. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Boxing

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The Fighting Spirit is a letter written by Arthur Conan Doyle first published in The Evening Chronicle (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne) on 15 june 1920.


The Fighting Spirit

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Boxing

Dear Mr. Lowes, — I have now read your little book, and enjoyed every page of it. I hope you will have gentle and happy later years to make up for all the turbulence. Your life is the kind of thing we writers can only imagine and make stories out of.

I think that all of us who, by example or by word or by pen, did anything during the last thirty years to keep the fighting spirit alive in this country "builded better than we knew," for it was invaluable when it came to the great crisis of the world's history. One of the best things it did was to spread to France, and I am sure it made the Frenchman of 1914 a very different man from him of 1870, as the Germans were bound to admit. It is not only the self-respect that a.man gains if he knows he can hold his own, but a whole country gains in self-respect and confidence when it knows that its picked lads can hold their own with those of other lands. I reckon that Carpentier had more to do with winning the war than any single Frenchman, except, perhaps, the Generals — perhaps more than they. You've done your part in the same way, and I have always been proud to think my Rodney Stone had, as I am told, a marked effect upon the revival of boxing in the country.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Windlesham, Crowborough, Sussex