Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  The arrival of legions of wounded men, walking or on stretchers, became a familiar sight at London railway stations where trains arrived from the Channel ports. To help them, a flood of young women – around 47,000 – joined up as Voluntary Aid Detachments to assist the professional nurses of Queen Mary’s Imperial Nursing Service, whose numbers rose from 700 to 13,600 by 1918.166 On the afternoon following the publication of the first casualty lists, the King and Queen called unannounced on the wounded at a hospital near Buckingham Palace, the first of many such visits.

  When an officer was killed the first his family knew would be a telegram from the War Office with the formula: ‘Deeply regret to inform you that [name] was killed in action [date]. Lord Kitchener expresses his sympathy.’ A few days later a telegram would arrive from the King and Queen: ‘The King and Queen deeply regret the loss you and the Army have sustained by the death of your son in the service of his country. Their Majesties truly sympathise with you in your sorrow.’ For NCOs and other ranks the notification was by letter, sometimes preceded by a letter from the dead man’s platoon officer. It was a stark, bleak notification that would become familiar in hundreds of thousands of households, and of whose arrival families would live in dread. The decision was taken not to repatriate bodies, partly because many were so badly dismembered, irretrievably lost or unidentifiable. In a culture used to a ritual mourning process, having no body to bury was a dislocating experience.

  Darker news from the front led to another burst of recruiting. Following an appeal by Esher, as president of the London County Territorials, more than 4,000 men joined up in London on 1 September alone; 1,488 men joined in Birmingham and 30,000 joined that day across the country; a similar number joined on 2 September.167 The existing Territorials were in arduous training, or were deployed guarding docks, forts, railways and arsenals while the regular Army fought in France: the next wave, however, were signing up for service abroad. They would be required urgently, such would be the casualties inflicted on the Old Contemptibles – a nickname the pre-war regulars who had gone to fight bestowed on themselves in derision at a remark by the Kaiser that Britain was sending ‘General French’s contemptible little army’ to fight the Germans.168 Small towns teemed with men in khaki: and although discipline was good, the Young Men’s Christian Association set up branches in 350 locations to help counsel the Territorials and to try to keep them free from the temptations of women and alcohol, through provision of ‘cheap temperance drinks, table games, sing-songs and healthy amusement.’169

  This influx of volunteers led to various practical problems. There were simply not enough old sweats to train recruits, who often had to spend weeks on drill or route marches to get fit before anyone was free to tell them how to engage the enemy, and use the weapons they would eventually receive. The War Office, to Kitchener’s fury, agreed to pay men 3s a day to be sent home pending training and having barracks to live in: Asquith overruled Kitchener on the matter. Territorials and recruits were billeted on civilians near their training camps, requiring a huge effort to find, or create, spare rooms. The process was not voluntary, and those who refused to cooperate were subject to the full force of military discipline. The organisation to cope with such large numbers took some time to catch up. Major General Sir Ivor Herbert, MP for Monmouthshire Southern, blamed this in the Commons on 9 September on ‘the want of reasonable forethought displayed by the War Office’.170 He asserted that men who had enlisted for three years or the duration were being placed on the Reserve because Army depots were too congested, and this was almost certainly a breach of contract. Worse, when the government knew recruitment was essential, and the country was still dazed by Mons, recruits ‘were sent back to their homes to tell the story of official incapacity and mismanagement.’171

  Whether men were in camps or civilian billets, there were no adequate systems for ensuring they were paid; and an even greater insult was that those who had given up their jobs but been placed temporarily on the Reserve were being paid at the Reserve rate of just 6d a day. Those in camps found inadequate food and hardly any lavatory or washing provision. Some men not in camps had been forced to share hostels with tramps, and became verminous with lice: some preferred to sleep outside on the ground without a blanket because the blankets, too, were lice-infested. Herbert asked why men who wished to enlist could not simply be registered and sent home to continue their normal lives until the Army could cope with them. The War Office seemed to think a levée en masse of half a million men could be conducted by the old means ‘of the recruiting sergeant at the corner of a street collecting corner boys and loafers. They have no idea of the men who have been coming forward, the finest type of working man in the country.’172

  Jack Tennant, Asquith’s brother-in-law, was under-secretary at the War Office and answered for Kitchener in the Commons. He did not gainsay Herbert, but suggested Monmouthshire had been unusually unlucky: which caused other MPs, with similar complaints from their constituencies, to heckle him. He conceded that ‘those who have to deal with such numbers are only human.’173 Those responsible at local level for processing volunteers and ensuring their proper training had proved unequal to their tasks, and it would be weeks before all ran smoothly. This placated no one, and Asquith spoke the next day about the scale of the problem. By the previous evening 439,000 men had joined Kitchener’s army. The record for one day had been 3 September, when 33,204 enlisted: 2,151 in Manchester alone.174 Territorial associations had been asked to help provision recruits, and generally had done so. Training centres were being established to ease the ‘congestion’.175 Asquith observed that county councils and municipal authorities owned many buildings and properties – schools, town halls and so on – that could have been used for the accommodation and training of recruits: his admonition was part of the process of waking up officialdom to the idea that this was total war, war on a scale never seen before in Britain even at the height of the Napoleonic threat a century earlier.

  Asquith’s and the government’s main fear was that the public would see the inability of the state to handle its new fighting force, and men would stop volunteering just as the Old Contemptibles were being shattered. With an eye on the press gallery, he told MPs: ‘Knowing, as we all do, the patriotic spirit which always—now, of course, with increased emphasis and enthusiasm—animates every class of the community, I am perfectly certain they will be ready to endure hardships and discomforts for the moment, if they are satisfied that their services are really required by the State, and that in due course of time they will be supplied with adequate provision for training and equipment.’176 He confirmed that once the initial aim of 500,000 recruits had been met, the country would be looking for a further 500,000, to create an Army of more than 1.2 million. This required another vote of money, which the Commons gave within days.

  Men who had flocked to the colours were left hanging around in civilian life while tales of heroism and sacrifice filled the newspapers, and this sometimes left them the innocent victims of domestic unpleasantness. Almost as soon as war broke out Vice Admiral Charles Cooper Penrose-Fitzgerald, a retired second-in-command of the China station, had formed the Order of the White Feather. The order encouraged women to give men of military age in civilian clothes a white feather – a traditional symbol branding a man as a shirker or a coward. The Vice Admiral had given thirty women in Folkestone a supply of these white feathers to distribute appropriately. Despite its vulgarity and unfairness, this direct shaming of men for a want of manliness was highly effective and caught on nationally, much to the chagrin of those who had enlisted but found themselves being impugned by their womenfolk (though many women found the movement appalling). MPs asked for a badge to be issued for men to wear in their buttonholes to show they had enlisted. Tennant promised to consider the idea. Public support for those who were obviously recruits was strong, but not always welcome: in late October Kitchener urged civilians not to show their appreciation by buying soldiers drinks in pubs, for their
mission could be accomplished only ‘if by hard work and strict sobriety they keep themselves thoroughly fit and healthy.’ He urged that committees be formed in areas with heavy concentrations of soldiers to police and enforce this request: there is no evidence the public took any notice.

  When Asquith went down to Aldershot on 13 September to inspect military preparations, with better news of the BEF driving the Germans back across the Marne and towards Reims, he found ‘all the streets & byroads are swarming with K’s new army – some in regulation khaki, but the vast majority loafing about in east end costumes: such a rabble as has been rarely seen.’177 He saw for himself the legion of men awaiting training: and by then 213,000 men and 57,000 horses had been sent to France.178 It would soon become apparent that the shortage of ammunition was matched by one of boots and uniforms. The head of procurement at the War Office was swiftly replaced.

  The toll taken on those charged with prosecuting the war was enormous. Mrs Asquith noted on 2 September that Grey ‘has nearly broken down’, his colleagues were feeling the strain, but Churchill was, according to her husband, ‘the one happy man … in his cabinet.’179 Beatrice Webb felt that Grey, with whom she and her husband Sidney had dined on 28 August, was ‘suffering … from an over-sensitive consciousness of personal responsibility’ at failing to prevent war.180 Matters were not quite so serene with Churchill as Mrs Asquith imagined, however. He was desperate for a naval offensive to drive the Germans out into the open, but his advisers were having none of it, causing him great anger. Military men, including soldiers attached to the Admiralty, found that to give an opinion with which he disagreed would ensure their not being consulted again. ‘I can’t stand these fellows who oppose me,’ he told one staff officer, Lt Col. A. H. Ollivant.181 It did not increase their respect for him.

  VII

  On 4 September Asquith made the first of four speeches in the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, at London’s Guildhall, justifying the declaration of war. Law and Balfour both spoke briefly in his support, and the Archbishop of Canterbury lent his spiritual authority. Asquith’s programme (with speeches in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Dublin to follow) was conceived so that, on going to Dublin, he might stop in North Wales and see Miss Stanley, at her family’s house at Penrhos on Anglesey. Whatever the pretext, it gave him the chance to show his face throughout the kingdom in what The Times called his ‘educational campaign’. At the Guildhall he spoke of the war as ‘a bloody arbitrament between might and right’; and added that not to have fought – whether ‘through timidity or through perverted calculation, through self-interest, or through a paralysis of a sense of honour and duty’ – would have left Britain ‘false to our word and faithless to our friends.’182 Germany alone was responsible for the ‘illimitable sufferings which now confront the world’; he praised the Empire for promising men and support, singling out India; evoked the fight against Napoleon, quoting Pitt; and implored more men to volunteer. The speech was open to the public, and many more attended than could fit in. At the end a recruiting sergeant patrolled outside.

  Political differences continued to be buried. It was announced there would be no contested by-elections for the duration (that would change with the rise of Sinn Féin in Ireland); a party could nominate a successor to its former MP. Labour, whose leaders had been so opposed to the war, came out and proclaimed support for the decision to fight Germany, as Europe was being threatened by a ‘military despotism’. It asked that the state should provide properly for the families of working-class men who joined up. An even more formidable enemy of the government would tour the country demanding the fight be taken ever more vigorously to Germany: Christabel Pankhurst, in self-proclaimed exile in Paris since early 1912 beyond the reach of the Metropolitan Police, announced she would give her first speech on 8 September at the Royal Opera House.

  Asquith delivered his second ‘national’ speech, this time in Edinburgh, on 19 September to ‘alternations of deep silence & wild enthusiasm.’183 The same day Lloyd George histrionically confirmed his new-found enthusiasm for war in a speech at the Queen’s Hall in London. ‘We have been too comfortable and too indulgent – many, perhaps, too selfish,’ he said, ‘and the stern hand of Fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the everlasting things that matter for a nation – the high peaks we had forgotten, of Honour, Duty, Patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of Sacrifice, pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.’184 The British had lived in ‘a sheltered valley for generations.’ As Gerard DeGroot has written, the message was to ‘fight not for something new, but for something gloriously old.’185

  By then, the sinking of three cruisers in a day by a U-boat in the North Sea had depressed morale even further, with submarine warfare seeming to threaten the supposed invincibility of the Royal Navy and the inevitability of victory. Hankey lunched in Downing Street as the news came out and noted that ‘I do not remember any events in this part of the war which caused such an atmosphere of depression.’ When The Times printed the names of the dead from HMS Hogue (48 killed), HMS Cressy (560) and HMS Aboukir (527) it took an entire page of small print to list them; and nearly half the following page was a list of the names of the dead of the BEF. The naval losses were regrettable, but the pre-war regular Army was being wiped out. William Inge, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, who would later acquire the nickname of ‘the gloomy dean’ because of his incipient pessimism, warned a congregation at Temple Church on 4 October that the war would alter national character, since Britain would emerge from it ‘to face bereavement, poverty, and the loss of that confident security in which we had wrapped ourselves for more than 100 years.’186 However, he did expect a recovery of national self-respect, and hoped the crisis would put the political squabbles of recent years into perspective.

  Asquith spoke next in Dublin, joined by Nationalists and Unionists. He endorsed Redmond’s call for an Irish brigade – indeed, said he would like to see an Irish Army Corps. The Times reported that ‘the immediate effects of Mr Asquith’s recruiting appeal in Ireland have not been remarkable.’187 The following week he was in Cardiff, following Lloyd George who had been in the city shortly beforehand launching a 50,000-strong Welsh Army Corps. By that stage – early October – Antwerp was under assault from the Germans, and the Belgians told London they would evacuate the city. Churchill left on a mission to the King of the Belgians and his ministers ‘to try to infuse into their backbones the necessary quantity of starch.’188 Churchill – who showed an immense reluctance to come home – succeeded in persuading them not to retreat to Ostend, but had to promise further British assistance although the BEF was already outnumbered and overstretched. He had, to the annoyance of his advisers but because he was determined to have a hand in fighting the war, raised a Royal Naval Division from men garrisoned to protect naval bases and some new recruits – they would be replaced by Indians – and suggested they be sent to Antwerp. Kitchener agreed.

  What was not agreed to was Churchill’s offer to resign from the Admiralty in order to command his new division, a suggestion Asquith noted raised a ‘Homeric laugh’ in the cabinet.189 Asquith said he could not spare Churchill from the Admiralty, though Kitchener was prepared to make Churchill (who had served in South Africa, and was an officer in the Territorials) a lieutenant general if Asquith wanted him to go. When Churchill returned he berated Asquith for not having released him, saying the naval part of the war was effectively over, with British superiority assured, and there were greater battles to fight. ‘His mouth waters at the sight & thought of K’s new armies,’ the prime minister told Miss Stanley.190 Churchill could not believe these new ‘glittering commands’ would be entrusted to ‘dug-out trash’ with their ‘obsolete’ grasp of tactics. ‘For about a quarter of an hour he poured forth a ceaseless cataract of invective and appeal, & I much regretted that there was no short-hand writer within hearing – as some of his unpremeditated phrases were quite priceless.’

  The questionable nature o
f Churchill’s judgement was highlighted again when Antwerp fell on 10 October, after a badly botched and ill-prepared operation. This was despite the efforts of the Naval Division, 1,400 of whose men the Dutch interned when they escaped to Holland. Almost another 1,000 were taken prisoner. They had a job landing at all, since the Admiralty had mined the sea as far as Ostend and, having promised to send a pilot ship to lead the forces in, forgot to do so. They had to be recalled and made a second attempt. Churchill lacked experts around him who would stand up to him: there was never the slightest chance his new division would be equal to the challenge. Asquith had a full account of the debacle from his son Arthur – known as ‘Oc’ – who had been there. What he heard led Asquith to conclude it had been a ‘wicked folly’: he felt that ‘nothing can excuse Winston (who knew all the facts) from sending in the other two Naval Brigades.’191 The first brigade had included ‘seasoned Naval Reserve men’. The other two, however, were mainly ‘a callow crowd of the rawest tiros [novices], most of whom had never fired off a rifle, while none of them had ever handled an entrenching tool.’ He reported to Miss Stanley that the main officers in Oc’s battalion had been ‘R Brooke (the poet) Oc himself & one Dennis Brown [sic] (a pianist) who had respectively served 1 week, 3 days & 1 day. It was like sending sheep to the shambles,’ he said, using a vernacular term for a slaughterhouse. Brooke and his friend W. Denis Browne (a composer) escaped to die in the Dardanelles: Oc survived. Asquith hoped Churchill (who blamed Kitchener) would learn from this, and expected him to hand over the Naval Division to the military authorities: the amateurism had been not only highly dangerous but also highly embarrassing. Asquith soon forgave Churchill, noting on 24 October that ‘the lunatic who edits the Morning Post [H. A. Gwynne] writes me a long private letter this morning, urging the supersession of Winston by Jellicoe!’192