Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  Interestingly, Gwynne’s criticisms of Churchill were based on Antwerp, and similar to Asquith’s: he had aired them in a sulphurous leader in the Morning Post on 13 October, and resolved to see Churchill (whom Tories such as Gwynne regarded as a turncoat) removed from office. Churchill was so incensed that he summoned Sir Stanley Buckmaster, the Solicitor General, now in charge of censorship, to ask whether action might be taken against Gwynne. Buckmaster told him his writ ran only so far as preventing the printing of sensitive military or naval information; it did not run to disciplining journalists who criticised ministers. Buckmaster did, however, write to Gwynne to suggest he might tone his attacks down; Gwynne would not. He was soon writing that ‘Mr Churchill has gathered the whole power of the Admiralty into his own hands, and the Navy is governed no longer by a Board of experts, but by a brilliant and erratic amateur.’193 Frances Stevenson recorded that Churchill had ‘disgusted’ Lloyd George by behaving ‘in a rather swaggering way when over there, standing for photographers and cinematographers’.194

  As if Churchill had not accumulated enough demerits because of his poor judgement, he now chose to court yet more controversy. When Prince Louis of Battenberg was forced out in October the First Lord, beleaguered after the fiasco of Antwerp, urgently needed an ally to replace him. That ally – to the bemusement of Whitehall and Westminster but the delight of the public – was a former First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Lord ‘Jacky’ Fisher. Though he had officially joined the retired list in January 1911, on his seventieth birthday, Fisher had been in and out of Churchill’s office since the outbreak of war. The King, when Churchill told him of the appointment, felt ‘great surprise’, believing Fisher had ‘created a state of unrest and bad feeling among the officers of the service’ when previously in post.195 According to Fisher, the King tried to dissuade Churchill by suggesting the job would kill Fisher: to which Churchill supposedly replied: ‘Sir, I cannot imagine a more glorious death!’196 He put other names to Churchill, all of which were swatted away. The King would not approve Fisher without consulting Asquith, whom he asked to stop the appointment. Asquith supported Churchill, who, he added, would resign if Fisher were not appointed. Lord Stamfordham, the King’s crusty, loyal and powerful private secretary, present at the interview, said that ‘from what Mr Churchill had said to the King on the previous day he would not be sorry to leave the Admiralty as its work was uncongenial to him: he wanted to go to the War & fight and be a soldier.’197

  Fisher deserved some credit: from 1904 until 1910 he had ordered the scrapping of old ships and their replacement by modern ones. It was largely down to him that the Royal Navy was so well equipped. Asquith endorsed the appointment because he believed, wrongly, that Fisher would have a restraining influence on Churchill. The King, whose many reservations included his fear that Churchill and Fisher would fall out, eventually assented, but wrote that ‘I do so with some reluctance and misgivings … I hope my fears may prove to be groundless.’198 He added: ‘I did all I could to prevent it, and told him [Churchill] that he [Fisher] was not trusted by the Navy, and they had no confidence in him, personally.’199 However, Fisher was seventy-three, a loose cannon, and no great respecter of political authority. He had a lifelong disposition to seasickness; he was a superb dancer; he had been an intimate of Edward VII; and was intensely religious. He also had a sense of humour: his motto, when granted arms on being created a peer in 1909, was ‘Fear God and Dread Nought’. However, he had an explosive and restless temperament: Fisher may have been close to the late King, but the reigning monarch disliked and distrusted him. George V came round, however, with Fisher telling Asquith that in a conversation to mark his appointment the King and he had got on ‘like a house on fire’.200

  Antwerp overshadowed the success the BEF and the French had had on the Marne in repelling the Germans beyond Reims, sparing Paris the fate of 1870–71. There would be no more great advances, as the Germans established a new brand of warfare. The first trenches had been dug on the Aisne in mid-September: a war of moving armies ended, as the entrenchments spread east and west. By October it was clear Kitchener had been right, and anyone who thought the war would be over by Christmas monumentally wrong. He warned Asquith that ‘both in the West & the East the big opposing armies may in some months’ time come to something like stalemate’.201

  VIII

  The first weeks of the war steadily proved it was not business as usual, whatever the propagandists said; and with the massive shift of men from business and industry to the Army, it could not possibly be. Other factors, too, brought the war close to home. The fear of successful, or even attempted, invasion instilled in the public for years through works of fiction was intense. Minefields were laid in the Straits of Dover and the mouths of the Tyne and the Humber as an additional precaution; seaplanes were stationed at Clacton and other points along the east coast to keep watch for approaching Germans. Kitchener expressed his concerns to Asquith about the vulnerability to invasion at a cabinet on 21 October.

  However, it was the arrival on British shores of civilians from allied nations either invaded by Germans, or under threat of invasion, that brought home to the public the scale and the impact of the war. Refugees from Paris arrived in Folkestone and London, as they did from Belgium, 26,000 of whom came in the week after the fall of Antwerp. On 9 September Herbert Samuel, head of the Local Government Board (LGB), announced government support for Belgian refugees and appealed for public help. He recalled in his memoirs: ‘The response was instantaneous and almost overwhelming. The LGB called for the formation of Local Reception Committees; at once no fewer than 2,500 sprang into existence all over Great Britain.’202 Earl’s Court and Alexandra Palace became distribution centres for refugees, and by late November had processed 45,000 people. As industry cried out for manpower after losing men to the services, those refugees unfit to enlist were urged to join the workforce.

  Such was the concern about the possibility of an invasion that Herbert Samuel was put in charge of a new sub-committee that sought to draw lessons from the experiences of Belgian refugees about how best to manage the civilian population in the event of the Germans arriving. The committee recommended the cabinet rule that civilians should stay put, as moving them would impede the transit of defensive forces to engage the enemy, who – it was believed – would have their supplies cut off by the Royal Navy and run out of ammunition. Civilians should be told by proclamation, but only once an invasion had happened, ‘to remain in their ordinary places of residence, not to drive livestock without orders from the military or the police, and not without orders to destroy food supplies, forage, bridges, rolling-stock, power stations, telegraphs, wireless stations, waterworks, sluices or locks, piers, jetties, boats or ferries.’203

  The cabinet rejected telling civilians to stay in their homes, as ministers felt sure they would not, as panic took over. It was also decided to destroy such cattle as could not be moved and to burn supplies of grain. With Hankey’s help, Balfour was put in charge of organising this plan, through meetings with Lords Lieutenant of all counties on the east coast of England and Scotland, to whom responsibility for activating it was delegated. It was also decided to brief the public, and not to wait until the immediate aftermath of an invasion to try to inform them. Posters were put up all over the counties affected, and there was no panic: some communities, without waiting for a government lead, had already made contingency plans.

  Further unease at home was provoked by the use of Zeppelins on the Western Front, and reflected by the traffic in the London insurance market in early October from businesses and householders seeking cover against bombing raids. Police stations in the eastern counties and in London put up notices that lamps must be extinguished wherever possible. Most of the customers, predictably, were from London and the east of England, and it was good business. Private customers were charged 3s 4d, or 16.5 per cent, of their property’s value; commercial ones 5s, or those on the east coast 7s 6d. This covered not just bomb
damage, but also damage from ‘riots or civil commotion’; but when it seemed no such civil commotion was likely, and customers sought insurance solely against bombing, a uniform rate was established of 2s per £1 of value, meaning a householder or business would need to pay a premium of 10 per cent of the value of the property each year to cover against these risks.204 Trade was brisk.

  At first, other changes to civilian life were gentle. The promenade concerts continued at the Queen’s Hall in London, albeit with substitutions of patriotic music in the programme – Boyce’s ‘Hearts of Oak’, the anthem of the Royal Navy, was included in the 15 August concert. People were told that the seaside was perfectly safe from German attacks, and although resorts started to empty, especially on the east coast, within a fortnight crowds began to return, as the weather became hotter and the trains were less committed to moving troops. At first, more race meetings were cancelled because of the difficulty in transporting horses, until in the second week of the war there was none at all. Trying to avert commercial catastrophe, the Jockey Club said on 13 August that, because of the number of livelihoods dependent on racing, fixtures should not be called off unless necessary: but in weeks of massive troop movements, they inevitably were. The sport soon resumed, and the St Leger was held in September and, after that, the autumn meeting at Newmarket. The King continued to enter horses in races, and therefore the sport felt it had official sanction to continue.

  Although county cricket continued through August, amateur clubs cancelled their fixtures. The secretary of the Marylebone Cricket Club announced on 6 August that he felt ‘no good purpose can be served at the present moment by cancelling matches unless the services of those engaged in cricket who have no military training can in any way be utilised in their country’s service … Cricketers of England would be sure to respond to any definite call.’205 F. H. Bacon, secretary of the Hampshire club, suggested a corps of professional cricketers be established: all his players agreed to serve. Nottinghamshire’s ground, Trent Bridge, was commandeered for treatment of the wounded. Many prominent amateurs, notably Sir Archibald White, the Yorkshire captain, left for their regiments; but otherwise the professional game carried on throughout August, attracting small holiday crowds that shrank as the news from France became worse. Finally, after the retreat from Mons, a broadside on 27 August from Dr W. G. Grace – the most legendary cricketer alive – caused stumps to be drawn. He wrote to the Sportsman: ‘I think the time has arrived that the county cricket season should be closed, for it is not fitting at a time like this that able-bodied men should be playing cricket by day and pleasure-seekers look on.’206 Most clubs cancelled their remaining matches; MCC, to the apparent annoyance of its secretary, decided not to send a first-class-strength team to play at the Scarborough Festival in early September. There would be no county cricket in England again until 1919, by which time thirty-four of the two hundred and ten first-class players who appeared in 1914 would have died for their country.

  Most other sports got the message: professional golfers decided to cancel all tournaments for the rest of the year, and the Rugby Union asked all its players to join up. Similarly, football clubs cancelled fixtures, putting grounds at the disposal of the War Office for training and recruiting. The Football Association promised that where matches were played, prominent local men would address players and spectators about the importance of enlisting. That was not enough. Frederick Charrington, the veteran temperance worker in London’s east end, wrote to the King demanding he intervene to have football stopped altogether; and to Lord Kinnaird, president of the FA, demanding he resign given the FA’s ‘unpatriotic’ decision to carry on playing professional matches: Kinnaird, in obvious discomfort, pleaded problems with contracts in ending the professional game.207 On 6 September Arthur Conan Doyle directly appealed to footballers to join up, and the Middlesex Regiment formed a Footballers’ Battalion for them; another was raised in Edinburgh as the 16th Royal Scots. Despite public criticism, the Football League played a full season in 1914–15: then both the League and the FA Cup were suspended until 1919.

  The pressures on fit young men, whether paid to entertain or not, became ever stronger after the BEF’s retreat. The 5 September edition of London Opinion was published with Alfred Leete’s poster of Kitchener pointing his finger at the men of Britain and proclaiming: ‘Your Country Needs You.’ When the recruiting offices reopened on the Monday, two days later, almost 5,000 men enlisted in London. When court sessions resumed after the long vacation judges sent minor offenders to the recruiting office rather than to prison.

  By early September, although the King himself had continued to patronise racing, voices demanded that the sport, too, be ended. Lord Robert Cecil led the call, saying that if football was stopping, so should racing. This was countered by a leading Newmarket trainer, George Lambton, saying that whereas football demanded big, fit men, racing demanded men usually so small that they would not be taken by the Army. This ignored the development of ‘bantam battalions’ that had specified a much lower height requirement for recruits; Lambton went too far in saying that the racing industry employed many men unfit for anything else, and who would be unemployed if meetings stopped. He also contended that horse-breeding would suffer if racing stopped, which would therefore affect the war effort. Racing at Epsom had been curtailed because of a military hospital’s having taken over the course: but now, in the words of Charles Bright, a Times reader, the continuance of other racing stimulated ‘a certain amount of disgust’ because each meeting ‘draws together probably as many undesirable loafers of military age as a League football match.’208 Bright raised the question of class tensions, suggesting that those forced to forgo football would not understand why ‘horse racing people’ could have their fun. His newspaper agreed. ‘Any attempt to hold the great popular racing festivals, such as Epsom, and above all Ascot, will make a deplorably bad impression upon our neighbours … can it be seemly to hold it [Ascot] when millions of men, including great numbers of our own people, will be at death-grips?’

  The arguments, which continued through into the spring of 1915, fell largely on class lines, with Lord Rosebery, while claiming he wished to keep out of controversy, making the case for business as usual and claiming that the greatest Ascot Gold Cup in history had been run on 8 June 1815, ten days before Waterloo ‘when Napoleon and Wellington were confronting each other to contend for the championship of the world.’209 He agreed that the English thoroughbred would disappear if racing stopped, because ‘no man can afford to keep bloodstock for the mere pleasure of looking at them in the stable.’ However, J. Holland Rose, a fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, asked why jockeys supposedly unfit for war service could not take horses and act as messengers at the front, ‘benefiting their country and stimulating skulkers to join the Army. The spectacle of large race meetings and professional football matches is little short of a national disgrace.’210 A survey of the 2,500 crowd at a meeting at Gatwick on 4 March 1915 found them mostly middle-aged, many female, and almost all those of military age in uniform: the war effort did not seem unduly compromised. The Times came under attack for condemning racing while continuing to report it. It pompously retorted: ‘A great newspaper cannot possibly limit its survey to those occurrences of which it approves.’211

  The following May, in the climate of harsh reality that followed the sinking of the Lusitania, and after months of debate, the government issued an instruction to the Jockey Club to end racing. There had been an outcry early that month when racegoers had impeded soldiers trying to return to the front, and wounded ones coming home, at Waterloo station. The Jockey Club promised to suppress the social side of race meetings, in keeping with their argument that the sport should continue to preserve the bloodstock industry. But public feeling was by then running so high that Runciman, president of the Board of Trade, issued the order, justified by ‘the necessity for keeping the whole of our British railway system free from congestion at any time for the rapid and unimpeded
transit of troops and munitions’; and free of what The Times called ‘undesirable mobs’.212

  The one exception was that racing could continue at Newmarket: the whole town was so dependent on the industry, leaders of the sport argued, that it would be devastated economically were racing closed down. Hardship on a more reduced scale was forecast for Epsom and Doncaster. Ireland was to be exempt, a further indication of how it did not share in Britain’s war. A. W. Cox, who claimed to own ‘one of the largest and most valuable studs in England’, wrote to The Times to say he was glad to make a financial sacrifice for his country: but he now wanted the government’s attention turned on ‘a great number of useless hangers-on who owned no horses and only raced for betting and were quite capable of bearing arms for His Majesty.’213 Cox trusted ‘these loafers’ would be put to serious work: a call that would resonate until conscription was introduced. Thus racing would continue sporadically until 4 May 1917. By that stage there was too little feed for the horses, its participants and most of its crowds were otherwise engaged, and those still attending were denounced as unpatriotic shirkers who wasted scarce rail capacity or petrol getting to meetings. By the same token, once racing was restricted the cry soon came for private motor cars to be banned for the duration, though that would be thwarted by the vehicles of volunteers being essential for war work.

  The consequences of the BEF’s fighting and the large number of casualties created not just more recruits but more recognition that normal life could not continue, because so many able-bodied men were required to fight. Also, the public were increasingly aware that ships and trawlers were hitting mines in the North Sea and sinking with increasing loss of life. The mood soured rapidly during that autumn. Her morale having slumped as the casualty lists lengthened, Mrs Asquith recorded in her diary on 26 October how ‘this war has caught us at our worst’. She recalled the last months of peace – militant suffragettes, Ireland facing civil war, senior Army officers contemplating rebellion, London society divided and ‘so flippant, callous, idle and blasphemous’, politicians ‘losing all sight of truth and courtesy’, the Church without influence and culture itself ‘grotesque’ and ‘invertebrate’.214 She continued: ‘All these things I have watched from far back, growing, growing: and now that shrapnel is killing an entire generation, we are left staring at God.’