Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  To R. D. Blumenfeld, editor of the Daily Express, Derby admitted in early November that ‘the numbers are decidedly better than they were but nothing like what I shall require to make it a success.’152 By 20 November 270,000 men had attested, and Derby told Stamfordham he hoped to double that number within a fortnight. The slow response caused the scheme to remain open a fortnight longer than planned, into mid-December. Even the numbers attesting would have little impact given the casualties at Loos and, before that, Ypres. What was clear, though, was that hostility to conscription was not so widespread as its opponents had maintained. Recognising these things, Montagu tried to persuade Asquith to set the compulsion process in motion. He said that if it went on the statute book it would not need to be used, as more men would join voluntarily – unless, he told Mrs Asquith, the war went on another year.153 She believed that the Unionists were using the question to force Asquith out and bring about a general election: she blamed Curzon as being ‘out for mischief’ on the matter – he had old scores to settle with Kitchener – and inevitably saw Northcliffe’s guiding hand.154 The Times went for Asquith after his Commons speech, which confirmed her suspicions.

  The preliminary results of the Derby Scheme were shared with the cabinet on 14 December, though the figures were incomplete. Asquith told the King the results were not good, despite a surge in the last days of the scheme. Derby had warned the public of this: notably in a speech at the Stock Exchange on 24 November, when he said that ‘men must come in very much larger numbers in the next three weeks if they are going to make the position of voluntary service absolutely unassailable.’155 Few practical obstacles to recruiting remained: The Times reported that ‘the medical examination to which recruits are subjected before attestation is, in some places at any rate, far from severe. The eyesight test has been suspended until men are called up and sent to their depots …’ The ‘indispensability’ test had been deferred, so the argument about whether a man was in a reserved occupation could be deferred too. It was being said that the ‘starring’ of men – signifying that they were indispensable – had been ‘too indiscriminate’.156 Also, civil servants – starred or not – were told they should attest. Everyone who attested was offered a khaki armband to wear to signal his willingness to serve his country: armlets were also designed for men in reserved occupations, further marginalising those without one.

  Asquith having recognised from its inception that the Derby Scheme had postponed rather than avoided the need to embrace compulsion, the moment had come when no further delay on the question could be contemplated. With Montagu not the only colleague to advise him to make arrangements, he had asked Curzon a month earlier to oversee the drafting of a Conscription Bill. He had done this with Leo Amery, a young MP who had entered the Commons as a Liberal Unionist in a by-election in 1911 and had worked as an intelligence officer. Now Curzon joined a committee on compulsion chaired by Long and including Smith, Crewe (who favoured conscription if the public would support it) and Simon, the only anti-conscriptionist. They awaited Derby’s definitive report, published on 20 December. Asquith seemed seriously rattled by the row he knew would come with many in his own party. J. L. Garvin, editor of the Observer, writing to Churchill, told him that ‘I think Asquith’s confidence in being able to hold on is very considerably shaken.’157 The public remained belligerent. When, a week before Christmas, Snowden tried to address a pacifist meeting in Blackburn, ‘his speech was constantly interrupted by scenes of disorder.’158 While holding such meetings was not illegal, those who facilitated and conducted them were warned that any consequent infringement of DORA would lead to their prosecution, and that police protection could not be guaranteed for those who expressed controversial views and started a disturbance. In this state of public opinion, the government proceeded to call up single men aged between nineteen and twenty-two who had attested.

  On 21 December Asquith, unable any longer to conceal the difficulties with the Derby Scheme, moved a resolution in the Commons for another million men to join the forces. This was despite 2,466,719 having volunteered since the outbreak of war.159 Separately, it was announced that all men not certified to be seriously diseased who had failed the medical examination for the Army would be asked to retake it. Asquith said he hoped every physically fit man not needed in a reserved occupation would volunteer. He asked that those who were fit and had not attested ‘will even now seize the opportunity of following the example which has been so patriotically set to them by the great masses of the community.’160 The resolution was passed without a vote. With the same lack of transparency that prevented him from revealing what he knew of the failings of the Derby Scheme, he also claimed French had relinquished his command of his own volition, and announced that the King had raised him to a viscountcy.

  Asquith dreaded what would have to come next. He told Sylvia Henley on 22 December, after the cabinet discussion of the Derby report, that ‘we seem to be on the brink of a precipice. The practical question is – shall I be able during the next ten days to devise and build a bridge?’161 Derby’s final report said that there were 5,011,441 men of military age; that 2,829,263 had either enlisted, attested or been rejected; and 2,182,178 had taken no action.162 He believed most of the unattested were bachelors, and unless the unmarried were pressed into service there was only a weak case for married men to join. He promised to do all he could to get unmarried men into the Army before married ones: and so, over Christmas, it rested.

  The second Christmas of the war illustrated how the conflict and the removal of men to the Army were beginning to change society, even without conscription. There were fewer reported cases of drunkenness, and many fewer people were fed in parish workhouses, a sign of the thoroughness of the recruitment campaign. However, the large number of those who still refused to be recruited left the government no choice but to proceed with compulsion, at least of unmarried men. Grey, Runciman, McKenna and Simon all claimed to be on the brink of resigning, Simon because he opposed conscription and the other three because they feared it would cause essential workers to be lost from mines, munitions and shipbuilding. Robertson, the new CIGS, stirred things further by telling the cabinet that a supply of ‘not less than 130,000 men’ a month was required if the war was to be fought adequately.

  The cabinet met on 27 and 28 December, the two meetings interpreted by the press and broadcast to the country as ‘the outward signs of a very grave political crisis’.163 No decision was reached at the first meeting; Asquith told the King that ‘much divergence of opinion was manifested.’164 He warned the King that Runciman and McKenna ‘said that they must consider their position’. His critics took this as a sign of his weakness, but he was desperately trying to stop the cabinet breaking up. Lloyd George sent a message to Asquith via Reading that if he came out in support of conscription he ‘would stand by him through thick and thin’ and that if a general election were precipitated by the crisis ‘he would do all the dirty work up and down the country – speaking and the like and would work for him like a n–.’165 However, if Asquith refused, Lloyd George would resign: the one consolation he offered was that he would never serve in a Tory government. No wonder Asquith told Mrs McKenna that the last week of 1915 was ‘in the fullest sense of the word a Hellish week; one of the worst even in my storm-tossed annals.’166

  Ministers waited for Asquith to raise the subject at the 27 December meeting, but he preferred to discuss other matters, and dragged on talk of everything apart from conscription. He then announced that as it was five o’clock there was no time to discuss compulsion. Curzon protested, accusing Asquith of having wasted time to avoid taking a decision; Lloyd George believed his behaviour was prompted by not knowing what answer to give to his ultimatum; however, fearing that four members of his cabinet would resign if he gave in to Lloyd George, Asquith was keen to avoid such a discussion. That evening Reading told Lloyd George that Asquith had been ‘much touched by his promise of loyalty’ and it had, after months of his trying to av
oid the inevitable, swayed him in favour of compulsion, at least of unmarried men.167

  At the second meeting Asquith at last started to address the question. He settled that unattested single men would be called up before attested married ones: Lloyd George and most of the Unionists had demanded enough men to fill seventy divisions. Asquith had not, however, squared everyone. Grey told Asquith on 29 December of his need to resign, in a letter which Asquith told him ‘fills me with despair’.168 He continued: ‘If I am to be deserted in this time of stress by all my oldest and best friends, it is clear I must consider my own position.’ He warned Grey his resignation ‘would, of course, be universally interpreted as a German triumph.’ Hard-line unionists such as George Lloyd had been losing patience with Grey, Lloyd having told his wife that ‘Sir E Grey now says that he will have no hand in measures taken with a view to starving German women and children! … which explains why some people say that the War will end twelve months after Grey leaves the Foreign Office.’169 Grey was not the only problem: McKenna refused to go above fifty-four divisions, which was far too small an army for what was required.

  On 31 December, in the course of two more ‘amicable though contentious’ meetings, a majority in the cabinet decided on a degree of compulsion in calling up men of military age who had not attested and could give no good reason for exemption.170 Single men and widowers without dependent children would go first. Runciman and McKenna felt able to stay because vital workers would not be called up; Grey came round. The King had told Asquith that ‘he would stand by and support him, even if all his colleagues were to leave.’171 The Sovereign noted, presumably on Asquith’s information, that Runciman and McKenna wanted to go because Kitchener ‘wants to maintain 70 divisions in the field & they say that our finances will only stand 50.’172 Simon’s resignation was announced in the press on 1 January 1916, after his failure to attend either of the two cabinet meetings on New Year’s Eve. Aggrieved Liberals took the outcome as a triumph for Northcliffe, and saw Lloyd George increasingly as his creature. Judging by the letters columns of newspapers, and the lack of any widespread protest, the public applauded the decision, and were perplexed at the trouble caused in reaching it. On 2 January Scott told Balfour he had been ‘honestly willing’ to accept compulsion provided the voluntary system had first been tried and proved unfeasible; but despite the general view of the Derby Scheme, Scott argued that ‘I do feel very strongly that compulsion is now being forced upon us without proof shown of its necessity, and I resent this the more deeply because it seems to me in the nature of a breach of faith’.173 Scott feared it would divide Britain at a time when it badly needed unity, and would end up putting into uniform a ‘negligible’ number of men. Balfour replied that he thought Asquith had no choice.

  Putting more men under arms was expensive. Robertson told Haig on 4 January that ‘certain ministers are trying to render compulsion useless by making out that although we may have power to take the men we cannot pay for them, and that they cannot be spared from their trades … The arguments I advanced were that we need every man we can get, and that it is for the Government to say how many they can pay for and how many they can find.’174 The old question of the most productive use of manpower was at the heart of the quarrel, and Asquith set up a special cabinet committee to investigate and discuss it. It met daily, sometimes twice daily, between 1 January and 2 February before finding a compromise about the use of manpower that prevented a cabinet split, the fall of the government and a possible general election. It was agreed the Army Council should aim to have sixty-two divisions in the field by late June with reserves for three months, and five divisions for home defence.

  On 5 January the government gave the first official indication of the losses from Loos: 773 officers killed, 1,288 wounded and 317 missing; 10,345 other ranks killed, 38,095 wounded and 8,848 missing. Thus in a fourteen-day period from 25 September to 8 October the BEF had sustained almost 60,000 casualties.175 Absurdly, until the summer of 1916 time-expired men from the regular Army were allowed to leave at the end of their agreed terms, and around 5,000 NCOs and other ranks did so each month until the legal power was introduced to prevent them.

  Asquith introduced the Military Service Bill the same day, after publication of the Derby Scheme report. Around 275,000 had enlisted rather than simply attesting; and 343,000 single men and 487,000 married men said they were available. Asquith called the results ‘wonderful and encouraging’, but attestation was not the same as bringing men into the services. He confirmed Derby’s figure that 651,000 single men of military age were unaccounted for: in other words, who had not attested.176 In the last four days of the scheme – 10 to 13 December – 1,070,000 men had attested.177 Yet Asquith said he still felt that ‘no case has been made out for general compulsion’ – in other words, for all men over eighteen and under forty to be called up whether single or not – and that the Bill could be supported by those who opposed conscription.178 It was, he said, simply a Bill to enable him to keep the promise he had made the previous November, that no married man who came forward to enlist would be required to serve until unmarried ones had been called up. He said that not to have given the promise would have deterred married men from attesting. And he also claimed that even if Derby’s figure of 651,000 turned out inaccurately high, the undoubtedly large numbers of unmarried men who could serve, and the promise he had given, now required action. Bachelors aged between twenty-three and twenty-six would be called up on 8 February. Two years later, Asquith made a comment on the issue of compulsion whose clarity retrospectively illuminated the workings of his mind at this point: ‘the question of compulsion is not a question of principle but of expediency’.179

  As so many married men had agreed to serve on the basis that unmarried men would be taken first, the unmarried had to be called up. Therefore, any single men with no grounds for exemption ‘shall be deemed to have done what everyone agrees it is their duty to the State in times like these to do, and be treated as though they had attested or enlisted.’180 All unattested men aged eighteen or over on 15 August 1915, who had not then reached the age of forty-one, and who were either unmarried or widowers without dependent children, would be regarded as having enlisted twenty-one days after the Bill received the Royal Assent. The exemptions, which other than those for men on work of national importance would be agreed by a tribunal, included those already rejected for service, those from families where their other siblings had already been killed and they alone were left, and clergymen of all denominations.

  And he announced another exemption: ‘A conscientious objection to the undertaking of military service.’181 He reacted angrily to ‘those expressions of dissent, and even of derision’ that greeted this statement, pointing out that Pitt the Younger had introduced such legislation to protect liberty of conscience during the Napoleonic Wars: and that South Africa and Australia both had such laws in place for the present war, the wording of whose exemptions was emulated in the Military Service Bill. Many who objected to taking life would serve in other capacities, such as on minesweepers and in ‘ancillary duties’, where they exposed themselves to the same risks as combatants – for example, as medical orderlies – but were unarmed. The tribunals that would hear these and other exemptions would be based in each local registration district, and would effectively be a continuation of the committees set up to oversee the Derby Scheme; and at a regional level there would be an independent appeals tribunal. It would have a range of judgements to which it could come, though all those judged medically fit who professed a conscientious objection would be subject to military discipline.

  Asquith said he deplored Simon’s resignation ‘more than I can express in words’.182 Simon explained himself to the Commons as soon as Asquith sat down. He expressed the pain he felt at separating himself from a man to whom he owed so much, but said that ‘the real issue is whether we are to begin an immense change in the fundamental structure of our society.’183 He did not accuse Asquith of bad faith
: but had thought the end of the voluntary principle would be abandoned only by general consent, which was wanting. He felt Asquith had been evasive in not specifying how many of his 651,000 men were able to serve and were avoiding doing so. Simon did not believe the total was sufficient to merit compulsion. The National Register included every man; thus many of those 651,000 were, he contended, medically unfit, or in the merchant marine, or clergy. On the basis of his constituency, Walthamstow, he argued that the numbers in the Derby report had been erroneously compiled, and should not have been used as the basis of a massive shift in policy.

  Aside from creating division, Simon feared the Bill, if enacted, would lead to the wider application of conscription. The powers making it a crime under DORA to argue against compulsion were, he argued, unduly draconian. He blamed ‘newspaper pressure’, and pleaded with his fellow MPs: ‘Do not tell the enemy without warrant that there are hundreds of thousands of free men in this country who refuse to fight for freedom. Do not pay Prussian militarism the compliment of imitating the most hateful of its institutions.’184