by Gavin Fuller
23 July 1917
OLD WAR COMRADES
SIR – At the request of many who have served or are serving in our great Army, I desire through the medium of your valuable paper to give publicity to the wish felt by many of all ranks that, after having served together in this great war, we shall continue to keep in touch with one another after it has been fought to a finish. Between those of us who have spent long months and even years in the trenches, patiently waiting for the guns and shells which would place us on terms of equality with the enemy, there have grown up steady ties of affection and comradeship. Silently a general determination has developed that those who have endured much together should keep together to the end, always remembering those who have fallen by the way, and a resolve has been made that we should cement that spirit of comradeship for our mutual advantage and protection in the future. Sir, prompted by the highest motives, many thousands of soldiers desire this. By many it is thought that the best way of attaining this end would be to create throughout the land a similar organisation to the Old Comrades Association, one of the many bright spots of that little valiant army of the past. Examination shows, however, that while we might with advantage follow its excellent example and ideals, yet to deal with an Army of millions, the machinery would require enlarging.
Briefly, the idea is to establish a soldiers’ association throughout the country and the Dominions. The motto might well be ‘United We Stand’, and I remember a worthy non-commissioned officer suggesting to me when discussing the idea before the Battle of Loos, why not call it ‘Veterans of the Grand Army’. No better name could, I think, be suggested. Amongst the many objects of such an association would be the following:
1. To watch and safeguard the interest of all members of the Forces, and to take such steps as are necessary to protect them during and after demobilisation.
2. To promote undertakings for the disabled, using our individual and combined efforts to find employment for all discharged soldiers and sailors.
3. To help discharged soldiers and sailors to prepare their necessary papers, and to see that their pensions and allowances are in order.
4. To secure the welfare of the women and children left by those who have fallen.
5. To perpetuate in loving memory and affection the dead.
6. To promote amongst the rising generation the grand spirit of patriotism and devotion that is the characteristic of the Army of today.
To achieve these objects it would be necessary to have borough and county organisations throughout the country, with a grand central council. Parliament would be requested to grant a recognised uniform for authorised parades only, which parades could be held at intervals during the year or on a stated bank holiday. Membership would be free, with service as a qualification. Women should be admitted to the association to represent their husbands during their absence on service.
For the past two years these questions have been discussed in various forms, and the very definite desire is evident that when we drift back to civil life, whatever our vocations may be, we may still hold together as a living corporate body. It should be noted that the welfare of every trade or profession is safeguarded by some such organisation as is hereby suggested. There are a large number who desire to contribute annually toward the general funds to be used for this organisation, and for extending help when necessary, and I therefore ask you, as a token of your appreciation of our serving soldier, to give all the publicity possible to this suggestion. Through your valuable paper, I ask all officers, non-commissioned officers and men who are interested to communicate their views to the Hon. Secretary, VGA Association, 3 Central Buildings, Westminster, S.W.1. Those who have been connected with County or Regimental Associations in the past are particularly requested to communicate at once with the undersigned, so that at the earliest data possible a meeting of county representatives may be arranged to prepare and approve of the first bye-laws.
Yours, &c.,
J. Norton-Griffiths
3 Central Buildings, Westminster, S.W.1
29 October 1917
NAVAL AIR SERVICE ‘COMFORTS’
SIR – May I ask for your very kind assistance in making known, through the medium of your widely read paper, this urgent appeal on behalf of the Royal Naval Air Service Comforts Fund (registered under the War Charities Act, 1916)? I venture to hope that the ever-generous public will again support this fund, which has distributed over 150,000 comforts during the last three years. Mufflers, cardigans, jerseys, mittens (dark blue or khaki coloured), socks (any colour), gramophones and games are urgently needed for the stations at home and abroad. Parcels should be marked RNAS Comforts Fund, and sent to Mrs Henry Balfour, Langley Lodge, Headington Hill, Oxford. Donations should be sent to the honorary treasurer, RNAS Comforts Fund, London City and Midland Bank, 129 New Bond Street, London. All will be most gratefully acknowledged.
Yours faithfully.
R.M. Sueter, Chairman and Honorary Treasurer,
RNAS Comforts Fund
30 October 1917
TOWARDS RECONSTRUCTION
SIR – We desire to appeal to all those who wish to see educated women take their proper share in the remaking of our country after the coming of peace to provide a fund which will enable them to fit themselves in time for the task which lies before them. Before the war it was plain to those who looked into the matter that a great deal of valuable work was lost to the nation, and much inefficient work was allowed to be a national hindrance, because parents and guardians had not sufficiently realised their duty in training the girls under their charge, and because these girls, when deprived of parental support, were without funds to pay for their own training. On the other hand, the war has shown what trained women can do. It is also showing daily that the supply of such women is not equal to the nation’s need – a need which will increase rather than diminish when the great work of reconstruction begins in earnest. There is urgent necessity that educated women and girls should be trained now, not only for the time of peace, but to meet the present national demand. But training takes money as well as time, and too often, while time is short, money is not forthcoming.
The Central Bureau for the Employment of Women – at whose offices thousands of women are interviewed and advised year by year – established seven years ago a small fund which has done and is doing excellent service in helping educated women to meet the expenses of training, maintenance during training or, at times, outfit and business equipment. The fund is administered with the greatest care and forethought, but its usefulness is curtailed by lack of capital. The committee earnestly desire, therefore, to raise a sum of £10,000 immediately, to be devoted entirely to the preparation of educated women for useful and remunerative professions. Such a fund could but be a sound national investment, for what greater benefit can a nation reap than the health, happiness and efficiency of so many of its citizens? We need only add, in appealing to those who desire to see trained women take their proper place in the reconstruction of our country after the war, that the administrators of the existing fund, of which the Countess of Dudley is president, court the fullest inquiry into its financial stability, and that all donations may be addressed to the Countess of Dudley, at the offices of the Appeal Committee, Central Employment Bureau, 5 Princes Street, Cavendish Square, W.1
Yours,
Bryce
Selborne
Mary G. Spencer
29 November 1917
CO-ORDINATION OF ALLIES’ WAR AIMS
Letter From Lord Lansdowne
SIR – We are now in the fourth year of the most dreadful war the world has known; a war in which, as Sir W. Robertson has lately informed us, ‘the killed alone can be counted by the million, while the total number men engaged amounts to nearly twenty-four millions.’ Ministers continue to tell us that they scan the horizon in vain for the prospect of a lasting peace. And without a lasting peace we all feel that the task we have set ourselves will remain unaccomplished.
; But those who look forward with horror to the prolongation of the war, who believe that its wanton prolongation would be a crime, differing only in degree from that of the criminals who provoked it, may be excused if they scan the horizon anxiously in the hope of discovering there indications that the outlook may after all not be so hopeless as is supposed.
The obstacles are indeed formidable enough. We are constantly reminded of one of them. It is pointed out with force that, while we have not hesitated to put forward a general description of our war aims, the enemy have, though repeatedly challenged, refused to formulate theirs, and have limited themselves to vague and apparently insincere professions of readiness to negotiate with us.
The force of the argument cannot be gainsaid, but it is directed mainly to show that we are still far from agreement as to the territorial questions which must come up for settlement in connection with the terms of peace. These are, however, by no means the only question which will arise, and it is worth while to consider whether there are not others, also of first-rate importance, with regard to which the prospects of agreement are less remote.
Let me examine one or two of those. What are we fighting for? To beat the Germans? Certainly. But that is not an end in itself. We want to inflict signal defeat upon the Central Powers, not out of mere vindictiveness, but in the hope of saving the world from a recurrence of the calamity which has befallen this generation.
What, then, is it we want when the war is over? I know of no better formula than that more than once made use of, with universal approval, by Mr Asquith in the speeches which he has from time to time delivered. He has repeatedly told his hearers that we are waging war in order to obtain reparation and security. Both are essential, but of the two security is perhaps the more indispensable. In the way of reparation much can no doubt be accomplished, but the utmost effort to make good all the ravages of this war must fall short of completeness, and will fail to undo the grievous wrong which has been done to humanity. It may, however, be possible to make some amends for the inevitable incompleteness of the reparation if the security afforded is, humanly speaking, complete. To end the war honourably would be a great achievement; to prevent the same curse falling upon our children would be a greater achievement still.
This is our avowed aim, and the magnitude of the issue cannot be exaggerated. For, just as this war has been more dreadful than any war in history, so we may be sure would the next war be even more dreadful than this. The prostitution of science for purposes of pure destruction is not likely to stop short. Most of us, however, believe that it should be possible to secure posterity against the repetition of such an outrage as that of 1914. If the Powers will, under a solemn pact, bind themselves to submit future disputes to arbitration; if they will undertake to outlaw, politically and economically, any one of their number which refuses to enter into such a pact, or to use their joint military and naval forces for the purpose of coercing a Power which breaks away from the rest, they will, indeed, have travelled far along the road which leads to security.
We are, at any rate, right to put security in the front line of our peace demands, and it is not unsatisfactory to note that in principle there seems to be complete unanimity upon this point.
In his speech at the banquet of the League to Enforce Peace, on 28 May 1916, President Wilson spoke strongly in favour of:
A universal association of nations … to prevent any war from being begun either contrary to treaty covenants or without warning and full submission of the cause to the opinion of the world.
Later in the same year the German Chancellor, at the sitting of the Main Committee of the Reichstag, used the following language:
When, as after the termination of the war, the world will fully recognise its horrible devastation of blood and treasure, then through all mankind will go the cry for peaceful agreements and understandings which will prevent, so far as is humanly possible, the return of such an immense catastrophe. This cry will be so strong and so justified that it must lead to a result. Germany will honourably co-operate in investigating every attempt to find a practical solution and collaborate towards its possible realisation.
The Papal Note communicated to the Powers in August last places in the front rank:
The establishment of arbitration on lines to be concerted and with sanction to be settled against any State that refuses either to submit international disputes to arbitration or to accept its awards.
This suggestion was immediately welcomed by the Austrian Government, which declared that it was conscious of the importance for the promotion of peace of the method proposed by his Holiness, viz., ‘to submit international disputes to compulsory arbitration’, and that it was prepared to enter into negotiations regarding this proposal. Similar language was used by Count Czernin, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, in his declaration on foreign policy made at Budapest in October, when he mentioned as one of the ‘fundamental bases’ of peace that, of ‘obligatory international arbitration’.
In his despatch covering the Allied Note of 10 January 1917, Mr Balfour mentions as one of the three conditions essential to a durable peace the condition that:
Behind international law and behind all treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities some form of international sanction might be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor.
Such sanction would probably take the form of coercion applied in one of two modes. The ‘aggressor’ would be disciplined either by the pressure of superior naval and military strength, or by the denial of commercial access and facilities.
The proceedings of the Paris Conference show that we should not shrink from such a denial, if we were compelled to use the weapon for purposes of self-defence. But while a commercial ‘boycott’ would be justifiable as a war measure, and while the threat of a ‘boycott’, in case Germany should show herself utterly unreasonable, would be a legitimate threat, no reasonable man would, surely, desire to destroy the trade of the Central Powers, if they will, so to speak, enter into recognisances to keep the peace, and do not force us into conflict by a hostile combination. Commercial war is less ghastly in its immediate results than the war of armed forces, but it would be deplorable if after three or four years of sanguinary conflict in the field, a conflict which has destroyed a great part of the wealth of the world, and permanently crippled its resources, the Powers were to embark upon commercial hostilities certain to retard the economic recovery of all the nations involved.
That we shall have to secure ourselves against the fiscal hostility of others, that we shall have to prevent the recurrence of the conditions under which, when war broke out, we found ourselves short of essential commodities, because we had allowed certain industries, and certain sources of supply, to pass entirely under the control of our enemies, no one will doubt, subject however to this reservation, that it will surely be for our interest that the stream of trade should, so far as our own fiscal interests permit, be allowed to flow strong and interrupted to its natural channels.
There remains the question of territorial claims. The most authoritative statement of these is to be found in the Allies’ Note of 10 January 1917. This statement must obviously be regarded as broad outline of the desiderata of the Allies, but is anyone prepared to argue that the sketch is complete, or that it may not become necessary to re-examine it?
Mr Asquith, speaking at Liverpool in October last, used the following language:
No one pretends that it would be right or opportune for either side to formulate an ultimatum, detailed, exhaustive, precise, with clauses and sub-clauses, which is to be accepted verbatim et literatim, chapter and verse, as the indispensable preliminary and condition of peace.
‘There are many things,’ he added, ‘in a worldwide conflict such as this, which must of necessity be left over for discussion and negotiation, for accommodation and adjustment, at a later stage.’
It is surely most important that this wise counsel should be kept in mind. Some of our ori
ginal desiderata have probably become unattainable. Others would probably now be given a less prominent place than when they were first put forward. Others, again, notably the reparation due to Belgium, remain, and must always remain, in the front rank, but when it comes to the wholesale rearrangement of the map of south-eastern Europe we may well ask for a suspension of judgment and for the elucidation which a frank exchange of views between the Allied Powers can alone afford.
For all these questions concern our Allies as well as ourselves, and if we are to have an Allied Council for the purpose of adapting our strategy in the field to the ever-shifting developments of the war, it is fair to assume that, in the matter of peace terms also, the Allies will make it their business to examine, and if necessary to revise, the territorial requirements.
Let me end by explaining why I attach so much importance to these considerations. We are not going to lose this war, but its prolongation will spell ruin for the civilised world, and an infinite addition to the load of human suffering which already weighs upon it. Security will be invaluable to a world which has the vitality to profit by it, but what will be the value of the blessings of peace to nations so exhausted that they can scarcely stretch out a hand with which to grasp them?
On my belief, if the war is to be brought to a close in time to avert a worldwide catastrophe, it will be brought to a close because on both sides the peoples of the countries involved realise that it has already lasted too long.
There can be no question that this feeling prevails extensively in Germany, Austria and Turkey. We know beyond doubt that the economic pressure in those countries far exceeds any to which we are subject here. Ministers inform us in their speeches of ‘constant efforts’ on the part of the Central Powers ‘to initiate peace talk’. (Sir E. Geddes at the Mansion House, 9 November.)