Words and The First World War

by Julian Walker

  FIGURE 4.2 Boots advertisement in the War Budget, 5 October 1916.

  Combining both pun and what to modern sensibilities seems an exploitative and callous topical reference, a Boots advertisement in the War Budget17 depends on a pun on the Somme (the battle was still being promoted at home as a victory at this stage, despite the general knowledge of the extent of the casulaties). The pun depends on the slang use of ‘some’ to mean ‘noteworthy’, in 1916 a fairly recent import from American slang. Nor was this an isolated example. In February 1917 The Tatler carried an advertisement for Gibbs’s shaving soap with the headline: ‘ “Somme” shave – It is really “some” soap, this Gibbs’s.’18

  An unnerving innocence is apparent in some of the early advertisements and naming of products, but the copywriters and marketers would surely have known what their products referred to: The Rochdale Observer in October 1914 carried an advertisement for fireworks that read:

  Fireworks! Fireworks!

  Ask for ‘Black Maria’ or ‘Jack Johnson’ shells.

  Wholesale House: Edwards & Bryning Ltd 19

  and at least two newspapers in December 1914 carried an advertisement for a box of 100 toys marketed by the Allies Toy Co. in Brighton, which included a scenario described thus:

  Boom! – Oom! – Om! – M! – Bang!!!

  The ‘Jack Johnson’ great German Gun is at work. First 25 harmless shells explode with a bang, then the Red Cross Nurses and their white Tents appear on the scene to deal with the wounded.20

  While many advertisements could claim that the use of war referencing was reasonable – a small ad in the Liverpool Echo reading ‘Remember the Somme. Send our Boys some WILLIAMS’S “VELONA” TOFFEE’21 is rather pushing at the boundary of this – some commercial use of war language was frankly gratuitous, slang or war-related terms having no intrinsic connection to the goods or services being offered. ‘Tipperary’ was used widely in this way in the early months: ‘ “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” – Buy a Ford Touring Car, £125. Rowland Winn, M.I.A.E., Automobile Engineer, Leeds’;22 ‘ “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary” But it’s much nearer to Hyams and Son, 5 Bishopsgate, Stockton, for good British Furniture. The Very Best and so easy to buy …’23 ‘Are we downhearted? No!’ was also quickly appropriated. The Dundee Evening Telegraph carried in the Miscellaneous Sales section of its small ads column: ‘ “Are we downhearted?” – No, certainly not. “Bargains and Business as usual” at Farrell’s pawnbroking salerooms, Brook St.’;24 while in December 1914 the Surrey Mirror carried an advertisement for H. Burton & Sons, wholesale and retail butchers of Redhill – ‘Are we downhearted? No! Because we know that our cause is just and that we shall whack the Germans. Also that we shall keep up old customs by having as Happy a Christmas as possible with old friends at home’.25 The large number of these apparently overtly exploitative advertisements argues a lack of awareness of the reality of the war, which itself argues a lack of the communication of that reality between Front and home. Did soldiers feel offended by texts such as ‘It must be warm to be Under Fire. But warmth with comfort under one of our blankets. Frank Rowe & Co. Army and Navy Wool and Blanket Suppliers, North Devon’,26 did they not care, or did the apparent jingoistic blindness add to the communication gap between soldiers and civilians? The tailing off in the use of ‘Are we downhearted?’ as an advertising slogan during the war may indicate an abandoning of innocence (though it was still occasionally used in 1918),27 but in its place the change of mindset at the Armistice was amply illustrated by tailors’ advertisements using phrases such as ‘from khaki to mufti’.28 There was perhaps an attempt to compensate for the sudden loss of relevance of so many charged terms: an advertisement in the Western Times in January 1919 urged readers to consume ‘Vi-Cocoa’ to help deal with ‘Peace Strain’,29 fortunately not a term which achieved wide circulation.

  DORA and the control of words

  The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), passed on 8 August 1914, was short, and largely concerned with reasonable measures to ensure security, but one clause (21) set the tone for the general tone of pressure that extended through the six later amendments: ‘No person in, or in the neighbourhood of, a defended harbour shall by word of mouth or in writing spread reports likely to create disaffection or alarm among any of His Majesty’s Forces or among the civilian population.’ Though there was a strong grass-roots movement against anyone who protested against the war,30 it was not until October 1915 that anyone was arrested, this being the Scottish socialist John Maclean, for making statements that were considered ‘prejudicial to recruiting’. The key offence governing the behaviour of civilians was doing anything, including talking, that might ‘cause disaffection’: ‘Spreading, or possession without lawful excuse of, report or statement likely to cause disaffection’.31 Effectively this tipped the scales in favour of the prosecution of the war according to the government’s principles, and rendered mere questioning of this an offence, even an action likely to bring comfort to the King’s enemies.

  ‘Unpatriotic Language’ was a frequently used headline heralding the spreading of disaffection; the Manchester Evening News on 18 February 1916 carried the story of Lewis Line, clerk, of ‘Inthlingborough’, who was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment under the Defence of the Realm Act. After drawing parallels between deaths caused by air raids over England and deaths from starvation in Germany, Mr Line unhelpfully stated that the British Army and Navy were ‘all scum’. ‘Unpatriotic’ was an accusation that was difficult to gainsay in wartime: the Derbyshire Courier reported on the ‘bad language’ used against the police by a man who had been caught ‘with his arms around the wife of a soldier’.32 ‘The Bench expressed their disapproval of the defendant’s unpatriotic and disloyal conduct’ – the arresting police officer stated his belief that he deserved ‘a good thrashing’. Earlier that month the Newcastle Journal had reported on the case of a miner in Melbourne who had refused to support ‘a patriotic levy of 6d a fortnight’ and had ‘condemned workers taking their part in the war’; this rendered him ‘an unpatriotic worker’.33

  On 17 May 1916 The Times (p. 6) published a report about William Hedley Hawkins, 34, a clerk, who had been charged under the Defence of the Realm Act. The article was headlined:

  £100 Fine for Disloyal Talk

  William Hedley Hawkins, … who surrendered to his bail at Guildhall yesterday, was fined £100 with the alternative of three months’ imprisonment for having made false statements calculated to prejudice recruiting.

  The defendant, giving evidence on his own behalf, denied having made many of the statements attributed to him. Last November, he said, he applied for and obtained permission to attest, but domestic matters prevented him from doing so. He had waited till the Government made some provision for married men. His nickname in the office was ‘Von Hawkins’. He certainly once made the absurd remark, ‘We shall one day see the Germans marching up the Mile End-road,’ and he also once said ‘I suppose I shall have to head a deputation if the Germans come over here.’ But that was mere chaff in reply to some bantering remarks. He urged that what he had said humorously had been taken seriously.

  Men who were employed at the Smithfield goods depot said they had attested on the defendant’s advice.

  The Pall Mall Gazette for Thursday 29 June 1916 reported the appeal proceedings under the headline ‘Alleged to be Pro-German’. Hawkins was alleged to have stated that:

  ‘God made Germany the first country in the world, and put the Danube there to keep out the barbarians’, that the King and Queen were secretly friends of Germany, and that the Russians were the scum of the earth; that the English have ‘brought this war on themselves’; that he did not think the working classes should be made to pay for the war, and that he had in circulation circulars to repudiate the war loan. He also said that ‘all soldiers are licensed murderers of the English Government,’ and that he would not willingly have them in his house.’

  Hawkins was said to have commented on
the typhus outbreak at the Wittenberg PoW camp 1914/15, in which it had been reported that guards and medical staff had abandoned their prisoners, who had previously been abused and allegedly tortured. Hawkins’ alleged comment was that ‘the British prisoners were not treated half so badly as the Germans in the English camp.’

  Office chat and bullying may have had some part in this, but as the trial and appeal went on Hawkins’ position became more difficult. Another clerk claimed Hawkins had said that ‘the Germans were justified in sinking the Lusitania because it carried guns and ammunition.’34 Hawkins claimed to have been wearing a moustache like the Kaiser’s for six years before the war, and that his ‘remarks about the Kaiser being a gentleman and a lover of peace were quotations from pre-war newspapers to show how opinions had changed in this country’.

  On 1 July (p. 5) The Times reported on the upholding of both conviction and sentence; Hawkins was allowed 14 days for payment of the fine of £100, which was probably more than his annual salary, and the same amount of fine levied three weeks earlier on Bertrand Russell for publishing the leaflet Two Years Hard Labour for Refusing to Disobey the Dictates of Conscience. Hawkins’ fine seems to have been an exemplary one, and what may have sealed his fate was the allegation by another clerk that he had said that ‘he would rather fight for the Germans than the English, and when the Germans came he would go and meet them with a red flag’. Socialism was all too easily seen as ‘unpatriotic’, allowing newspapers to indulge in wordplay with the names of prominent socialists. John Bull altered Kier Hardie’s name to ‘Kur von Hardi’,35 the pun (on General Friedrich von Bernhardi) explained in rhyme by the Western Mail:

  Fritz has his Hardi for his sins,

  And so has John I fear;

  The former’s name with Bern begins,

  The latter one’s with Kier36

  The Passing Show was still calling Ramsay MacDonald ‘Herr Ramsay-und-Macdonald’ after the Armistice.37

  A different kind of patriotic pressure on language was seen in the case of Anzac-on-Sea. Early in 1915 Charles Neville set about purchasing several acres of land at Piddinghoe on the south coast of England and set up a company to develop this into a new town. Rather than advertising plots for sale through the usual process Neville placed advertisements for a competition to name the town; the first name selected was New Anzac-on-Sea. Neville’s scheme involved some shady practices – offering free plots as prizes, but with hefty conveyancing fees – which were exposed by the Daily Express, and the scheme was eventually wound up.

  The original name had been chosen within an environment of celebrating the achievements of the Anzac forces, but as it quickly became entrenched in particularly Australian national identity, the word Anzac was felt to be a special case. Neville held a second competition to rename the town, Peacehaven being selected. A request by the governments of Australia and New Zealand led to the ‘ “ANZAC” (restriction on trade use of word) Act, 1916’, passed on 18 December, which made it illegal to use the word, ‘or any word closely resembling that word’, for any commercial purpose. The penalty for a first offence was a fine of ten pounds, with one hundred pounds for a second offence. The figures serve as a strong indicator of the severity of the punishment given to William Hawkins for defeatist talk.

  While DORA undoubtedly matched the mood of the public early on, the growing number of cartoons portraying the act as an interfering elderly woman from 1917 onwards showed increasing public impatience. For Jennie Lee, aged 10 in 1914, the restrictions that forced her parents and other members of the ILP to hold anti-war meetings in the countryside were enforced by ‘the local authorities and someone called DORA’.38

  Outrage and the enemy within

  The war’s immediate impact against civilians, seen in the stories of refugees fleeing before the German advance into Belgium, the reprisals taken against franc-tireurs (the French term was used in German, a memory from the Franco-Prussian War of 43 years earlier), and later the stories brought by the Belgians arriving as refugees in Britain, provoked expressions of outrage. Britain’s bringing in troops from its colonies,39 and Belgium’s apparently pointless refusal to allow German troops free passage, did the same in Germany. A tone of moral accusation was set early on, a propaganda that also assumed absolute moral justification, witnessed by the German belt-buckle motto ‘Gott mit uns’ and the British myth of the ‘Angels of Mons’ in September 1914, itself an example of how fiction could become apparent fact.40 The language of outrage pervaded any attack on civilians, non-military buildings, the destruction of heritage or property. Postcards sent home from the Front showed destroyed villages and damaged churches with captions such as ‘after the passage of the barbarians’, ‘destroyed by the boches’ or ‘what’s left of it’. The deliberateness of the process seemed inexplicable, and postcards emphasise the ‘deliberate’ or ‘systematic’ nature of shelling towns and villages. This was specified too in a still-standing plaque in Farringdon Road, London, which commemorates the fact that ‘these premises were totally destroyed by a Zeppelin raid’. This was apparently not something that could be comprehended in a civilised continent; indeed the frequent use of ‘barbarism’, more common in French commentary on events (in a postcard view of Albert, ‘les ruines après le passage des barbares’), indicated the breaking down of civilisation; ‘civilisation’ was ‘caught napping’ when the German army invaded Belgium.41 The Germans were aware that ‘barbarism’ was being applied to them, and resented it.42 For one British soldier at least civilisation was being abandoned by his own army: on 20 February 1917 George Lamb trained in taking a trench using bombs and bayonets, and wrote ‘war has got to such a stage that we have to be a bit uncivilised at times’.43 Such an approach to war was contextualised by locating it within a different kind of culture – ‘Kultur’, the German word being appropriated by the British to mean all that was seen in German attitudes as alien to civilisation. Kultur according to the Hong Kong Education Department ‘is the name given by the Germans to their own form of education and government’.44 ‘Atrocity’ and ‘Kultur’ were linked throughout the war: on 20 April 1918 the Daily Mirror reported on the shelling of Rheims Cathedral as ‘German kultur has added another atrocity to its list of horrors’ (p. 4). The vowel ‘u’ perhaps allowed a connection with ‘Hun’ – Walter Brindle wrote of ‘Hunnish Kulture’ in France and Flanders, which describes several acts of what are labelled ‘useless destruction’ such as smashing furniture and ruining buildings.45 British propaganda proposed that ‘kultur’ was akin to a religious mission to infuse German ideals through the world, with a fanatical dedication to the Kaiser; the wording of some of the responses to this, such as ‘the aim of Britain must be to drive her [Germany] into the wilderness, not for 40 years, but until she behaved herself and lived at peace with her neighbours’46 seems bewilderingly naïve and arrogant. Masefield, interpreted rumours that German troops had eaten cats as ‘It probably only means that the cats were killed as part of Kultur, or for not saluting, or for night-wandering …’.47 Vansittart’s note to this states that ‘kultur’ means ‘a compression of all the German civilised values, achievements, ideals and general superiority. When used by British and French writers, the tone is usually sardonic’. It certainly had scope for extension into satire or disdain: the Kaiser, as head of state, could thus be the ‘great ruler of the Kulturists’,48 and a drawing of a soldier on a crowded railway platform, in The Sphere, has the caption ‘ “Come and Look at the English swine” – A wounded prisoner is mocked by his “kultured” captors’.49 But the term seemed to be easier to recognise than define: Weekley wrote that it was identical in origin, but not in sense, with ‘culture’,50 though in an article published in the Daily Mail he stated that ‘kultur’ and ‘savagery’ were interchangeable51; the Dundee People’s Journal described the German government as ‘the squareheaded wild Indians of Berlin’,52 and the Arbroath Herald described them as ‘squareheaded savages’.53 It was clearly inimical to British geopolitical sensibilities
and understanding of the attitude of a civilised state, and in this context the war, as spelled out on the servicemen and women’s victory medals, could be morally justified as ‘The Great War for Civilisation’.54

  Of the major war glossaries, both Fraser and Gibbons and Brophy and Partridge omitted ‘kultur’ completely. Three of the dictionaries published immediately after the war offer definitions: ‘the German system of intellectual, moral, aesthetic, economic and political progress, the characteristic of which is the subordination of the individual to the State, through the power of which kultur may ultimately be imposed on the rest of the world’;55 ‘civilisation, culture and human progress in general, in accordance with Teutonic ideas and ideals’;56 ‘German education; of which the chief doctrines were that the State should be supreme in Germany and Germany supreme in the world’.57