Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  Frank Bridge had written chamber music and a few orchestral works throughout the war; compared with his pre-war output the music is subdued and reflective, and some directly linked to the war. In 1915 he had been acclaimed for his Lament, in memory of a nine-year-old girl drowned on the Lusitania; in 1916 he wrote a choral work For God and King and Right. In 1917 his music became more escapist, his Four Characteristic Pieces including movements called ‘Water Nymphs’ and ‘Fragrance’, followed by Three Pastorals and a suite, Fairy Tales. In 1918 Bridge majestically set Brooke’s sonnet ‘Blow out, you bugles’, ironic given his later reputation for pacifism.

  Bridge at least managed to keep composing throughout the war, helped by not seeing active service. Parry, weighed down with teaching and administration as director of the Royal College of Music, and by charity work, produced a handful of masterpieces – ‘Jerusalem’ (as he did not call it), his choral ode ‘The Chivalry of the Sea’, his Songs of Farewell and some organ chorales. Sir Edward Elgar wrote mostly songs during the war, and some incidental music and short orchestral works; his great creative impulse, which until the war had produced large-scale works, had declined. Elgar’s sadness at the passing of the world in which he had flourished would be heard in four works begun in 1918: his Violin Sonata, String Quartet, Piano Quintet and, most renowned of all, his Cello Concerto, the last considerable work he completed.

  One young conductor – Adrian Boult, exempted from active service because of his health (he would live until shortly before his ninety-fourth birthday) – directed the London Symphony Orchestra in a series of concerts of British music from early 1918 onwards. Boult had served as an orderly in a reserve battalion until 1916, but was then transferred to the War Office as a translator because of his proficiency in French, German and Italian. His concerts included only the second performance of Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony, premiered just before the outbreak of war, Parry’s Symphonic Variations and works by Butterworth, killed on the Somme: but one especially would pass into legend.

  Throughout the war Gustav von Holst (the von, of Swedish origin, was dropped early in the conflict) had applied for various types of non-combatant service, but even then had been dismissed as medically unfit. At last he secured the post of director of music for the YMCA, which was arranging orchestral and other musical entertainments for soldiers in Europe: and Holst would take up the post in Salonica in early October 1918. His friends knew that between late 1914 and early 1916 he had written his orchestral suite The Planets, but it remained unperformed. One of his patrons, Henry Balfour Gardiner, decided to mark Holst’s departure by paying for a private performance before he left, on 29 September in the Queen’s Hall in London.

  Holst enlisted his friend Boult to conduct the first performance. Holst taught music at St Paul’s Girls’ School in Brook Green in west London, and its choir was enlisted to act as the chorus in the last movement, ‘Neptune’. Despite the innovations of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and even, in his Fifth Symphony of 1912, Holst’s teacher Parry, the work was like nothing heard before in the English orchestral canon: though Holst’s friend Edward Dent said it sounded ‘much less modern’ than he had expected from his study of the score.36 Some first performances of great musical works have gone down in legend for their dreadfulness, but not The Planets, one of several that reveals Holst as a genius to compare with any of his European contemporaries, such as Strauss or Stravinsky or Ravel. It is one of the towering works of the English musical renaissance. The invited audience was overwhelmed; an impresario immediately recruited Boult to give the first public performance in the ensuing season.

  A week after his pupil’s triumph, having fallen victim to the flu epidemic to which his already weak heart was not equal, Sir Hubert Parry died at his house in Rustington, Sussex: but he had trained the composers – Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, Arthur Bliss, Jack Moeran, John Ireland as well as Holst – who would ensure this growing part of British cultural life would continue and flourish after his death, and after the war whose end was by that stage, at last, in sight.

  The general run of privations among those for whom high culture was no consolation provoked occasional acts of resistance. The MFGB voted by 248,000 to 219,000 against the combing-out of 50,000 men from their industry. The next day the Amalgamated Society of Engineers fought Auckland Geddes to prevent younger members being combed out to fight, though most dissent vanished when the expected German offensive materialised. Eric Geddes told Parliament that it seemed Britain did not realise how short of merchant shipping it was; monthly output in the last quarter of 1917 had averaged 140,000 tons, but in January 1918 it was just 58,000 tons.37 The timing was unfortunate, because his statement coincided with a visit in early March by the Prince of Wales, who had become popular during the war, to factories on the Clyde, where he congratulated workers on their contribution to victory and exhorted them to continued effort, not least because production of shipping remained inadequate.

  Geddes blamed the management and workers in equal measure. His target of 3 million tons a year – 250,000 a month – seemed unobtainable given the then rate of production. His achievement was to unite shipbuilders and their unionised workers, who jointly put out a statement condemning him for asserting that they did not understand the gravity of the situation. They blamed the government for breaking a promise by Lloyd George, made the previous November, that conditions for shipyard workers – certainly in terms of food rations for heavy labourers – would be improved. They also claimed that government direction of labour – towards warships and away from merchant vessels – was the root of the problem, and production would rise without the interference between masters and men.

  A wave of strikes afflicted production early that summer, as union membership once more rose steeply (it would increase by 19 per cent over the year) and despite pay rises for munitions and agricultural workers. The booming aircraft industry was a hotbed of unrest. By late May 40,000 miners in South Wales were on strike over the refusal of management to recognise a workers’ committee, and the coal controller was called in. All demands were met, though many miners did not go straight back to work. Then in June the MFGB demanded another 9s a week for its members. The government capitulated, fearing the effect a coal strike would have on overall production. From 23 to 26 July engineering workers in Coventry and Birmingham walked out because of talk of conscripting them, the strike ending only when the government threatened to call up its leaders and put them under military discipline. For all the bluster, the government was sufficiently agitated that Lloyd George asked for hourly reports. The total of strikes in all industries, at 1,165, was over 400 up on 1917, and the highest since 1913.38

  The unrest in the coalfields, which lasted all through 1918, was of particular concern because it affected so many areas of life, from powering the Royal Navy to domestic heating and electricity, the essential production of iron and steel, and transportation of troops, people and goods by steam-powered railways. In 1913 the mines had produced 287.4 million tons of coal; by 1918 it was down to 222.7 million. The quality of the coal also fell. It wasn’t just strikes that were to blame for the shortage of coal, even though in the first eleven months of 1918 there were 134 disputes in the mines, costing 1,081,000 days’ labour.39 The combing-out of coal miners was having a serious effect on productivity, too. Before the war 1.16 million men had worked in the coalfields; 289,000 had joined the services, and the government had decided to call up 50,000 unmarried colliers despite the wishes of the Miners’ Federation. A further 25,000 miners were called up after March 1918, further reducing output. Churchill warned the War Cabinet that if the war continued into 1919 this would inevitably lead to a fall in the production of shells. Ministers had to balance their efforts between ensuring the country could hold up against the Germans and keeping morale high.

  With these massive manpower problems, women continued to be co-opted into the war effort with ever greater rapidity. As they reached working age they were absorbed int
o the National Service scheme; at eighteen they could join the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps or the Women’s Royal Naval Service and many, sensing an excitement similar to that felt by young men who had joined Kitchener’s army in 1914, did. In March 1918 the WAACs advertised for 3,000 women clerks, 1,700 to serve in France. The young of both genders were being warned with increasing ferocity about venereal disease, which despite hospitals offering treatment free of charge continued at epidemic proportions. Advertisements about the scourge became ever more graphic, with horror stories of babies being born blind through syphilis. This being no time for prudishness, the King – but not the Queen – visited a VD treatment centre in London’s Rochester Row in February 1918, and issued a statement afterwards on the importance of the work done there.

  Across society, there could be no let-up in the sacrifices. On 22 April Law introduced what became the last wartime Budget, what he described as ‘a financial statement on a scale far exceeding any that has ever been known at any time or in any country’.40 The war was now costing £7 million a day; but even had it ended the cost of running the country would be greatly higher than pre-war.41 Expenditure in 1914 had been £173 million; Law said that, excluding war expenditure, spending in 1918 would be £270 million, largely because of the rise in the cost of pensions, but also to keep promises about an expanded state education system that was being proposed.42 The national debt had, he said, risen to £7,980 million, and part of that was because of money advanced to Russia that was not being repaid, after the revolution: though Law refused to concede it was a bad debt. Revenue would fall short of expenditure by £110 million in 1918–19, which Law proposed to cover by raising taxes. He gave a measure of how things had changed since 1914: ‘This addition to taxation which I propose this year is something well over 60 per cent of the total tax revenue in the last year before the War.’43 Even so, only 26.3 per cent of the cost of the war was met by taxation; the rest was debt.

  Even in putting up taxes, Law was struggling. He could not raise the excess profits duty, because the Treasury had realised any rise was likely to cut the total amount raised, by discouraging additional production. So he had to be ingenious. One such measure was ending the penny post on letters, which had lasted for seventy-eight years since the introduction of the postage stamp in 1840. Letters would now cost three-halfpence. The stamp duty payable on cheques would rise from a penny to twopence, which would bring in an extra £1 million a year. Income tax would rise from 5s to 6s in the pound, which was projected to raise another £41.4 million a year; but would only apply to incomes above £500 a year.44 The super-tax would rise from 3s 6d in the pound to 4s 6d, and would start at incomes of £2,500 a year rather than £3,000. Someone earning £5,000 a year – the prime minister’s salary – would pay an effective rate of 7s 2d in the pound, or 36 per cent; anyone making £20,000 a year would pay 9s 5d in the pound, or 47 per cent.

  The public believed farmers were making huge profits, and Law proposed to send the Inland Revenue after them; it was estimated that 90 per cent of farmers kept no accounts. That was expected to raise £5.3 million a year. He said he would more than double the duty on spirits to bring in £11.15 million; and to double the duty on beer, bringing in £15.7 million. Because the food controller fixed the price of beer, the full tax rise could not be passed on to the consumer; but the public also believed the brewers were profiteering. Law was taking a huge risk, given the brewers’ support for the Tory Party. The rise in tobacco taxes was smaller, from 6s 5d to 8s 2d per pound weight; and their controlled price meant that, as with beer, some of the cost would be borne by the producer. Although imports were severely restricted, the government agreed to allow as much tobacco into the country as the consumer desired because, as Law explained, the rate of tax was so high that importing tobacco was ‘almost importing money’.45 The increased taxation would raise £8 million a year; and a new sugar tax £13.2 million.

  Law proposed a new tax that played to newspaper reports of the rich avoiding sacrifices that everyone else had to make. His proposed luxury tax, which he had considered the previous year, would be levied in three ways: on luxury items, such as jewellery; on items perceived as luxuries because of their high price; and on luxury establishments, such as hotels and restaurants. He proposed to levy this at 2d in the shilling, or 16.5 per cent. It was, he said, a higher rate than the comparable tax in France, which raised £24 million a year: he aimed to raise even more. There would now be very few pies of which the state would not get a slice. However, the public, or at least those in work, were still bringing in high real incomes.

  The labour movement renewed calls for the ‘conscription of wealth’, which the government parried by further issues of War Bonds, imploring those with reservoirs of cash to fund the ever-more expensive fight. The second week of March was deemed ‘Business Men’s Week’, when the King led an appeal to plutocrats to subscribe £100 million within seven days. A Liverpool shipping line, Frederick Leyland & Company, led the way by subscribing £2 million; an act not entirely philanthropic, given the competitive rate of interest of 5 per cent. Within four days the required amount was reached, and the total raised was almost £139 million.

  III

  The press, whose clout had grown enormously during the war because of the public’s thirst for information, became more and more strident about what it perceived to be the shortcomings over the direction of the fight. Robertson – as Chief of the Imperial General Staff – became the obvious target of increased attacks by the Northcliffe papers during January 1918. Northcliffe might have thought he was doing Lloyd George a favour; Repington, The Times’s military correspondent, believed his proprietor had ‘tied himself to LG’s chariot wheels.’46 On 21 January the Mail accused Robertson of following ‘the strategy of the stone age’; in ensuing days the paper accused the General Staff of making scapegoats of politicians for their failures, and rubbished arguments about manpower shortages.47 Far from these attacks helping Lloyd George, they actually presented him with two problems. If he sacked Robertson it would seem he was doing Northcliffe’s bidding; and there was a danger that, as with the assault on Kitchener in 1915, it would encourage support for Robertson, and make him unsackable. Unionist MPs were angry and their War Committee demanded the government condemn Northcliffe: Lloyd George asked Northcliffe to call his dogs off, and told Stamfordham he ‘could have taken him out and shot him’.48

  Dawson, Repington’s editor, had been cutting passages from his articles that he felt would annoy either the government or Northcliffe. Dawson – whose reputation would be destroyed by his support for appeasement twenty years later – chose to indulge his proprietor by rewriting Repington to match the line taken in the paper’s leaders, an interesting example of modifying facts to suit opinion. Dawson’s conduct outraged Repington, who felt he could no longer work for Northcliffe, and so resigned from The Times on 16 January 1918. In his resignation letter he said his proprietor had taken ‘a subservient and apologetic attitude’ to Lloyd George while showing ‘neglect of the vital interests of the Army.’49 The final straw was a Times leader misrepresenting what would happen to some 420,000 men combed out of reserved occupations. Repington had been told they would go to the Navy and the nascent Royal Air Force and be used just to ‘maintain’ the Army, but the leader said they would all go to the trenches. ‘This was too much for me,’ the Colonel wrote. ‘I should deserve to be hanged as a Boche agent if I remained with these imbeciles any longer.’50 He gave Dawson a preview of his letter of resignation, adding for good measure that the leader had been ‘mendacious’. The Times published an equally mendacious statement giving its version of the resignation, Northcliffe being rattled by Repington’s celebrity and his assertion that the paper’s ‘intrigue’ against Haig and Robertson had forced him out – ‘for that inference there is not the very slightest foundation in fact.’51

  Some – notably Strachey, editor of the Spectator, believed Northcliffe’s attack on the Army was another sign of megalomania,
and a possible belief that he could supplant Lloyd George as prime minister. Repington, meanwhile, consoled himself in Paris, seeing Esher and doing some useful personal public relations. ‘Repington came to Paris in a furious mood,’ Esher noted. ‘He has been scurvily treated by Northcliffe.’52 A senior officer had told Repington the Germans had 165 divisions in the west: just as Lloyd George, who knew the real figure was 175, proposed to send more soldiers to Palestine, with the War Cabinet continuing to ignore warnings about German troop movements. With an estimated 201,000 fit men at home that the government refused to send abroad, the next row was brewing.53

  The prime minister’s own western strategy consisted of not launching any more attacks there, following the debacles of the previous two years. Whether he believed Palestine was a satisfactory alternative strategy, or simply felt he needed to have an alternative plan to pursue in order to avoid pouring men into the Western Front, it is impossible categorically to say: he was not always straight even with Miss Stevenson, let alone in his own memoirs. He was, however, unquestionably sincere in wishing to avoid further wholesale slaughter, whatever his motives.

  All was not well in the government. Carson resigned on 21 January – to the prime minister’s ‘deepest and most unfeigned regret’ – when the War Cabinet discussed extending conscription to Ireland, introducing Home Rule as a quid pro quo.54 Since he had nominally overseen propaganda, and the department of which John Buchan was director, Carson’s departure left an important job to be filled. On his resignation Buchan told Northcliffe there should be a minister accountable to Parliament to drive the work of the department. He had Northcliffe in mind, not realising that such an appointment would make the potential for rifts in the government even worse, given the toxicity many ministers felt was attached to Northcliffe. The question did not arise because Lloyd George, recalling his obligations to Law, sent for Beaverbrook; in any case, Northcliffe claimed he would not compromise his newspapers’ independence by joining the government. Beaverbrook was shrewd enough to persuade Northcliffe to oversee foreign propaganda, though not as a minister. He was based at the British War Mission in Crewe House (put at the nation’s disposal by the Liberal politician) and would report to the prime minister, to whom he gave an assurance of loyalty. Beaverbrook was cynical: ‘I expect to lose my life in a deadly scrap with Northcliffe which is sure to come sooner or later,’ he told Riddell.55 Buchan became director of Intelligence; Arnold Bennett took charge (unpaid) of propaganda in France, his experiences providing material for one of his better late novels, Lord Raingo.