Stephen Roberts explodes a popular historical over-simplification.
Men of the 11th battalion The Cheshire Regiment, near La Boisselle July 1916. Photo by Ernest Brooks.Many people’s understanding of the past has been moulded by myth. Geoff Dyer in his book The Missing of the Somme
cites a very good example. He had grown up believing that, just after
Britain’s declaration of war on Germany on 4th August 1914, his
sixteen-year-old grandfather had joined the queue of volunteers at the
recruiting office only to be told that he was too young and that he
should take a walk around the block and reappear when he was nineteen.
He did so a few minutes later and subsequently served as an underage
soldier, witnessing many horrors on the Western Front which scarred him
for life. Dyer’s subsequent research, however, showed that his
grandfather had joined up as a twenty-year-old. So popular were such
stories that his relative was ‘everyone’s grandfather’. A colourful tale
of the Great War had been become common property and an expression of
everyone’s concept of the truth about 1914.Current research is challenging many such myths about soldiers on the Western Front. But what about the story of how the public reacted to the outbreak of war? There is a belief that the war was so popular in Britain in 1914 that virtually everybody rushed onto the streets in order to wave the Union Jack, sing the national anthem and bay for blood. This article will show that this is another myth – the result of the common experience of some people but not of the whole of society. Contemporary sources reveal a complex range of reactions to the declaration of war, few of which can be regarded as mindless jingoism.
Reactions Pro and Anti
Germany’s invasion of Belgium and Britain’s ultimatum occurred over the Bank Holiday weekend of 1914. It was warm and sunny and London was thronged with people eager to hear the latest news. Michael MacDonagh, author of London During The Great War (1935), found himself in the middle of huge crowds in Parliament Street and Whitehall. People were ‘highly excited and rather boisterous,’ he wrote. There were ‘young men in straw hats’ and ‘girls in calico dresses … all were already touched with war fever’. The Times reported that the ‘demonstration of patriotism and loyalty became almost ecstatic’. Even the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, observed how, while he travelled between Parliament and Downing Street, he was ‘always escorted and surrounded by crowds of loafers and holidaymakers’. The declaration of war itself was greeted with unbelievable glee.
These are the scenes which many of us believe to be representative of the mood of the entire country. But should we? Firstly, we must remember that London, the capital city, is not like the rest of the country – it is bigger, busier and more cosmopolitan than anywhere else. It often becomes the focus for the most extreme reactions to events. We may remember that, during recent times, it has witnessed anti-poll tax and pro-hunting riots the like of which never occurred in the provinces. Furthermore, in 1914 the public could not witness current events on television. Those who wanted fresh news sometimes felt the need to get close to the places where they perceived that history was being made – Whitehall, Westminster and Buckingham Palace. A similar phenomenon was witnessed in 1997 following the death of Diana Princess of Wales.
We cannot deny that these crowds seemed genuinely pleased to be going to war. They felt that it was going to be a short, glorious and victorious crusade against evil. Their spirits were no doubt lifted by sunshine, alcohol, youth and holiday gaiety. It is also probable that people had temporarily lost their individuality as they willingly dived into a boiling pot of mass hysteria.
Thoughtful individuals did, however, articulate surprisingly strong pro-war sentiments. Winston Churchill wrote to his wife on 28th July 1914: ‘Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested … and happy’. Several intellectuals and poets echoed the feeling. Rupert Brooke in ‘Peace’ thanked God for the war because He had ‘caught our youth and wakened us from sleeping’. When they joined the fight they would become like ‘swimmers into cleanness leaping’ and escape a world ‘grown old and cold and weary’. He believed that society had become too urban, middle-class, safe and selfish. War would return mankind to a state of nature where honour, adventure and heroism would subsume materialism, routine and respectability.
Of course such beliefs struck a chord with testosterone-filled young men, who, like youths of all eras and cultures, were always ready for a fight. Vic Cole, for instance, admitted to being ‘terribly excited’. He ‘conjured up brave visions’ of himself ‘lying behind a hedge, rifle in hand firing round after round at hordes of Germans’. Len Whitehead, a farmer’s son, reflected on the ‘glamour of it all’ but admitted that ‘nobody gave it a second thought that they might never come back’. Serving soldiers could not wait to get into action. General Sir Tom Bridges, writing in 1938, remembered his mood as a cavalryman in 1914: he was ‘quite ready to fight anybody. There was no hatred of Germany … we would equally readily have fought the French. Our motto was “We’ll do it. What is it?”’
Anti-war feelings could, however, be equally visceral and spontaneous. Florence Nield was a child in Swansea in 1914. She remembered saying, ‘Oh lovely, we’re going to have a fight, you know’ and then being surprised when her mother gave her a ‘quick slap’. This reaction probably arose from simple working-class common sense, but there were also more formal demonstrations against the war. Following the belligerent hysteria in Trafalgar Square on the afternoon of 4th August, there was an equally large pacifist gathering on the same spot in the evening. Many other people revealed their antipathy to the conflict. The British section of the International (a Socialist solidarity organisation) held a demonstration on 2nd August. The chairman of the Labour Party, Ramsay MacDonald, expressed his opposition to the war on 5th August and was backed up by the majority of his national executive committee (although he later resigned when his party declared its support for the war). Britain’s first working-class cabinet minister, John Burns, resigned when war was declared. But, on the whole, British socialists did not have a strong pacifist agenda: they were mainly concerned with economic and domestic reform and failed effectively to oppose the war thereafter.
Stronger and more co-ordinated opposition came from the Radical wing of the Liberal Party whose hatred of violence, waste and injustice had been fomented by their religious nonconformity. John Morley came from that tradition and was a member of Asquith’s cabinet. He resigned in protest against the declaration of hostilities on 4th August.
Lancashire
Back in Morley’s home county of Lancashire opposition to the war was strong. The Manchester Guardian had been conducting a campaign for neutrality since July and, along with other newspapers, carried a huge advertisement for the Neutrality League, which told Britons to do their duty and keep their country out of ‘a wicked and stupid war’. The people of Bolton expressed solidarity with these sentiments. Six thousand of them marched for peace on 1st August and 2,000 later attended a meeting in the town hall which passed a motion in favour of British neutrality. Lancashire’s prosperity depended upon trade and manufacturing; the people knew that war would cause intolerable disruption leading to much hardship. A speaker at a meeting of the Bolton Co-operative movement said that war ‘always made the poor poorer and put the poorest in a position of tragic impotence’. A member of the Unitarian church wrote to a Bolton newspaper:
It is the worker who will suffer … in the name of Christ let us remember the horrors of war; on the battlefield slaughter and pestilence; at home famine, misery and death.His auguries proved correct as, by 15th August, the closure of European markets had led to a slump in trade and increased the number of local unemployed to 5,000.
There was never any pro-war hysteria in Bolton. People seemed well aware of the horrors a major conflict would bring. However, their initial espousal of the causes of neutrality and pacifism seemed to wane at the end of August when the press reported German atrocities in Belgium and the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from Mons. Bolton, along with the rest of Lancashire’s great industrial towns, yielded vast numbers of recruits for the famous ‘pals’ battalions of Kitchener’s new armies. Popular repugnance of war gave way to a determination to set right certain wrongs, and to defend the honour of the nation. A Bolton man expressed a commonly held view to a local journalist: ‘Tis none of our quarrel but we mun keep us word. Eh, they do deserve all they get, making trouble like this ’ere’.
Majority Acquiescence: a Necessary War
Thus, by the end of the first month of Britain’s involvement in the Great War, effective opposition to the conflict had declined. Committed pacifists remained a minority. Most people had decided to back the government’s efforts to drive the Germans out of France and Belgium, but this did not mean that everybody was possessed by an irrational spirit of war fever and jingoism. The majority seemed to inhabit the grey area between the pro-war zealotry of the London crowds and aspiring warrior poets, on the one hand, and the earnestness of the pacifist radicals on the other. It was accepted that war had become necessary. People were not going to let their country and each other down. There was plenty of resolve and some enthusiasm, but very little euphoria. It was hoped that Germany would be taught a swift lesson and that the world would be returned to normal as quickly as possible.
It should also be remembered that military service was a familiar concept to the British people in 1914. Haldane’s army reforms of 1907 had established the Territorial Army, the Officer Training Corps and the Reserve. Recruitment to these back-up forces never reached the desired quantities, but by 1913 there were about 300,000 men in the Territorial Army, which meant that a much higher proportion of the male population was familiar with army discipline than is the case now. In addition, approximately 40 per cent of adolescent boys belonged to youth organisations, such as the Boys Brigade and Church Lads, which had patriotic and military as well as religious purposes. These facts do not imply that British society was militaristic and therefore warlike, but they can help to explain why so many people were ready to serve their country. The infrastructure and attitudes conducive to uniformed service and self-sacrifice were in place. A Bolton woman summed up a common attitude: ‘It’s hard, but I couldn’t like for him not to do his duty’, she said when interviewed by a local journalist about her husband’s departure with his battalion.
Other local newspapers support this judgement. Again, there is no indication of mass pro-war hysteria – rather a gloomy acceptance that Germany’s actions had forced Britain into having to go to war in order to protect its honour, its treaty obligations and Belgium. For example, the Lancaster Guardian of 8 August 1914 expressed its profound regret that ‘wiser counsels’ had not prevailed and that ‘the mad war spirit’ had not been checked. It observed:
The general feeling in the town is one of ‘seeing it through’, all classes uniting in condemnation of the nation which has disturbed the peace of Europe on the eve of the centenary of Waterloo.The paper went on to record the dramatic scenes which unfolded as the territiorials and reserves were called up and the regulars mobilised. Lancaster was a garrison town and seemed well aware of the seriousness of war.
Nearby Kendal was not a military town, but it had always taken a great pride in its territorial battalions. The Westmorland Gazette described the events of the first four days of war in immense and touching detail. Again, journalists observed that there was ‘no excitement’ and that
The transition from ‘playing at soldiers’ to the real article was a sobering operation. Gaily these men had gone off to camp but four days ago, today they were going off to the most serious business of a soldier’s life – the defence of home and country.Kendal’s civilians waved their soldiers off. ‘Some of the women shook hands with the territorials’ as they marched to the railway station, ‘but it was a quiet leave-taking. The hysterical scenes that occurred when the volunteers left for South Africa were not repeated’. Many local newspapers contain similar comments and report the profound and intricate mixing of civic and national pride which motivated the men to march away so willingly to war and their neighbours and loved-ones so movingly to send them on their way.
Press Accounts
British society in 1914 was a lot more provincial than it is today. Local newspaper were the means by which people learned about the world. Punch magazine was a perspicacious observer of contemporary life. On 19th August 1914 it carried a cartoon entitled ‘The Local Touch’, which showed an East Anglian fisherman, pipe in mouth, addressing a holiday-maker on the beach in front of his home town with the words ‘That there Kaiser ’e ’ont be satisfied until ’e’s ruined Mudborough’. No doubt many people had a simplistic and parochial understanding of foreign and strategic affairs. Kaiser Wilhelm became the personification of all that they were fighting against. On 12th August Punch had carried a cartoon showing a young lady sitting at the bottom of the steps of an East End tenement, addressing an audience of ragamuffins with the words ‘I’d give the German Emperor wot: I would straight. I’d pull every feaver aht of ’is ’elmet’.
The Kaiser was a convenient enemy. Attitudes to his people, however, were ambiguous. There were many Germans living in England and there was widespread admiration of German culture and industry. A writer to the Catford Journal on 21st August said that he was unable to summon up any hatred for the Germans, as the only ones he had ever spoken to were ‘two of the nicest gentlemen’ he had ever met. He declared that Britain was at war with the Kaiser but ‘with the German people – never. We must fight; honour demands it. But we must not lose our tempers’. During the second week of war the Sphere still contained advertisements for a holiday in Hamburg and for German cameras. The Swindon Advertiser carried a notice for the Dresden Conservatoire, fully expecting a ‘speedy return to normality’ by the new year. Popular hostility to Germans in Britain did not really appear until after the defeat of Belgium and the shelling of the east coast in November, followed by zeppelin raids and u-boat attacks during 1915.
There were numerous complaints that Britain had picked the wrong allies. Many still saw autocratic Russia as the natural enemy, but, during the following months, there was a change in the popular world view – with Russia coming to be seen as a saviour. Its enormous army was expected to roll up the Germans at any moment. A Punch cartoon showed the Kaiser about to be run down by a terrific charge of Cossacks. An absurd rumour began to circulate that Russian soldiers were being transported to the Western Front via Britain. Again, Punch captured the moment with its cartoon of 23rd September which showed a railway porter convincing a gentleman that he had evidence that Russian troops had passed through the station – in the carriages ‘the cushions and floors was covered with snow’. It had already published a satirical article in which the writer claimed to have been told a story by one ‘Wiggins’ that his brother-in-law had met some Russian soldiers near a railway bridge. They had said ‘vodka, vodka’ and then ‘embraced him warmly’ after he had offered them his pocket flask. They rejoined their train, shouting ‘Berlin’.
Rumour was clearly a problem. Spies were believed to be everywhere. Lord Frederick Roberts, Commander-in-Chief of Britain’s army, declared that there were 80,000 of them in Britain. By September the Metropolitan Police had received 8-9,000 reports of espionage. They investigated 90 of them and found them all to be false. A Punch correspondent living on the Isle of Wight was plagued by parties of boy scouts who kept coming to his house in order to find out about his German maid, ‘a most unwarlike and inoffensive alien’. Eagerness to get involved in the war effort generated bizarre behaviour.
A related phenomenon was panic buying. Despite the popular belief that the war would be short-lived, many people felt it necessary to ‘lay in supplies’. The Tottenham and Edmonton Herald of 9th August told of a lady emptying a grocer’s store on Palmer’s Green with £17 worth of purchases. The Hull Daily Mail of the same day lamented that the price of wholesale flour had risen from 27 to 40 shillings per 20-stone sack. The Farnham, Haslemere and Hindhead Herald said that anybody who bought more than his immediate needs was a ‘traitor and a thief to his country’.
Business As Usual?
In the midst of all these psychological, social and military dramas there was also indifference. Some people in the more isolated regions never realised that a war had been declared. Rural districts which lacked concentrations of population and therefore civic pride were slow to yield recruits for the army. Many people seemed determined to carry on as usual.
Following the initial sense of shock experienced in the first week of war, several holiday resorts such as Eastbourne and Blackpool were as busy as ever. Seven thousand people attended a cricket festival at Canterbury. The Newport Evening Post carried this item under the heading of ‘War Items’: ‘The members of Caldicot Wesleyan Church Sunday School had their annual summer tea on Tuesday in a field kindly lent by Mr. W. Howard of Church Farm.’
Was this an example of indifference or of extreme parochialism? Did the inhabitants of Caldicot simply not know what was happening in the world or was their understanding of international affairs so deeply rooted in their local experience that the relocation of the annual chapel tea was as significant an event as the German invasion of Belgium? It is an enigmatic item and a salutary reminder that people are complex and that we must not simplify our past. Perhaps, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the public’s reaction to the declaration of world war in 1914, more regional and local studies will be required. I hope your appetite has been whetted.
Issues to debate
- Why did some, but not all, people celebrate the declaration of war in 1914?
- Why was there no effective opposition to the war?
- What sources might a researcher look at in order further to explore the question of popular attitudes to the war?
Further Reading
- Theo Barker (ed), The Long March of Everyman (Penguin, 1978)
- G.J. Bryant, ‘Bolton and the Outbreak of the First World War’ (Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Volume 138, 1988, pp 181-1990)
- Gerard J. DeGroot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (Pearson, 1996)
- Hew Strachan, The First World War, Volume 1: To Arms (O.U.P., 2001)
- Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (Macmillan 1965, 1986)
- Richard Van Emden and Steve Humphries (eds), All Quiet on the Home Front (Headline, 2003)
- Dennis Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War (Penguin, 1978)
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