by James Taylor
However, the slogan MacDonagh recalled is not one attributable to Leete, but it is reminiscent of the slogan associated with James Montgomery Flagg’s well-known propaganda poster I WANT YOU FOR U.S. ARMY of 1917, which was adapted from Leete’s war cartoon (see Chapter 4).
The second witness was the English writer Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet, (1892–1969). His elder sister was Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell and his younger brother was Sir Sacheverell Sitwell; and like them he devoted his entire life to art and literature. Osbert Sitwell’s observations on seeing Kitchener in the flesh, and the recruitment poster that featured him, featured in one part of the writer’s autobiography, entitled Great Morning – Being the Third Volume of Left Hand, Right Hand (Macmillan, 1948). They are conveyed in his characteristically florid style: ‘As the nights of 1914 wore on, their splendour increased. There was no sign of anything amiss, no sudden chilling of the blood, unless it were at the single glimpse I obtained of Lord Kitchener, sitting like a pagod in flowers and exotic leaves.’
Baron Low poster (KCL)
Sitwell continued: ‘With an altogether squareness and solidity, [Kitchener] sat there as if he were a god, slightly gone to seed perhaps, but waiting confidently for his earthly dominion to disclose itself… a slightly unfocused glance which seemed almost in its fixity to possess a power of divination… And you could, in the mind’s eye, see his image set up as that of an English god, by natives in different points of the Empire which he had helped to create and support, precisely as the Roman Emperors had formerly been worshiped. Within a few months’ time, when from every hoarding vast posters showed Lord Kitchener pointing into perspectives in space, so steadily perceived, if focused with uncertainty, and below, the caption “He wants YOU!” I often thought of that square figure.’ It is odd how this historian omitted the word ‘BRITONS’ from the actual slogan used in the London Opinion poster.
The third witness was Mont Abbott, who worked as a farmhand in Oxfordshire during the war. His recollections of the time were compiled and edited by Sheila Stewart from taped interviews in Lifting the Latch: A Life on the Land, based on the Life of Mont Abbott of Enstone Oxfordshire (Oxford University Press, 1987). In that book, Mont Abbott said: ‘The gwoost [ghost] of Kitchener had been fading [sic] his finger at me for some time on they [sic] washed-out posters outside the Post-Office, “Your King and Country Need You”. Being up to my eyes the last few years in “Rosy’s rump”, lone calves, mad bulls, and hungry horses out at Fulwell I hadn’t had time to list [sic] at Kitchener. But by 1918 the old gwoost were cropping up afresh, pointing at me from barn doors and tree trunks “Your King and Country Need You”.’ This caption derives from the official ‘Call to Arms’ and recalls the marching ballads and songs.
He continued: ‘The Germans were hammering yet again at our exhausted lads in the fifth army, 90,000 of our men and 1,300 of our guns taken at Lys. I’d be sixteen in July. I only hoped the lads could hold out till I got there.’
Mont Abbott went on to explain: ‘On my sixteenth birthday, 16th July 1918, I went to enlist with four other bwoys [sic] from our Enstone… our old school boss, Mr Glover… were proud to see his “new men”, shook hands with each of us and directed us straightaway to the new recruiting station office that had opened up in St Giles, Oxford.’
Although Mont Abbott recalled an image of Kitchener on posters, it is not entirely clear if it really was the Leete design. He made one reference to Kitchener ‘fading his finger’, however, the words ‘pointing at me’ might not necessarily refer to Kitchener’s pointing finger, but rather that the number of the posters in his locality, over time, had simply caught Abbot’s attention. The slogan certainly derives from one of the official messages from the King that by this time would have featured on many thousands of posters. The fact that Mont Abbott was still seeing recruitment posters in 1918, when compulsory recruitment had been introduced in the early months of 1916 is certainly curious. The credibility of Abbott’s recollection is questionable.
Montreal recruiting station (McCord Museum, Montreal)
Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices of The Great War, published in association with the Imperial War Museum in 2006, featured two fascinating witnesses who recorded their experiences of seeing posters featuring Kitchener, although only one seems credible. Private Thomas McIndoe of the 12th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, recounted the reason why he enlisted: ‘It was seeing the picture of Kitchener and his finger pointing at you – any position that you took up the finger was always pointing at you – it was a wonderful poster really.’ McIndoe probably saw the poster(s) in north London. Whereas Marjorie Llewellyn recalled: ‘As a young schoolgirl I remember there was great excitement in Sheffield when the posters went up showing Kitchener saying “We Want You” and a number of our young men joined up – they were the pick of the city.’ Her recollection is at odds with recorded posters, as no known examples featuring Leete’s war cartoon bears the slogan ‘We Want You’.
Posters, posters everywhere
Examinations of photographic material from various private collections and public archives, including those of the Imperial War Museum, reveal some significant sightings of recruitment posters designed for Britain and the British Empire. They were displayed in likely places such as public hoardings, as well as in and around recruitment centres, railway stations and the London Underground (which, with the support of Frank Pick, commissioned work by Frank Brangywn and Gerald Spencer Pryse – some of these posters were sent to the Front), also in town squares and city centres, within commercial and public buildings, on taxi-cabs, as well as the exteriors of buses and trams, which traditionally carried advertising.
Within these black and white photographs you can pick out images of beckoning and pointing fingers, as well as some outstretched and waving arms, however, these images are notable for not being the work of Leete. To date, no photographs taken in Britain have yet been traced that show the public posting of the BRITONS – WaNTS YOU poster, or the David Allen and Sons variant.
A series of photographs taken inside a Montreal recruiting station, circa 1916–17, provides clear evidence of what was actually on display, including many recruitment posters from Britain. Only one poster of Canadian origin can be seen that was inspired by Leete’s cartoon design. It was produced in 1915 for Montreal, and featured the words ‘Let his heart a thousandfold Take the field again! Are YOU One Of KITCHENER’S OWN?’ The BRITONS – WANTS YOU poster is conspicuous by its absence (see illustration on page 99).
An extensive article, entitled ‘Recruiting By Poster – A remarkable Patriotic Campaign’, published by the Windsor Magazine (No. 246, June 1915), featured nineteen illustrated examples, although there was no reference to Leete’s KITCHENER poster – all those profiled being PRC designs.
The keenest observational descriptions of British recruitment posters can be found in the publication Through French Eyes – Britain’s Effort, written by Henry David Davray and published before the end of the war by Constable and Company in 1916. Some of his recollections are reminiscent of Leete’s London Opinion poster and the David Allen and Sons variant, although they were in fact different designs.
Davray (1873–1944) was a Frenchman and an Anglophile who worked as a writer and translator in London during the war. At the height of the recruitment period he observed: ‘Any Englishman of more than 18 and less than 40 years of age who has failed to enlist must feel remarkably uneasy in his conscience. Which-ever way he looks, bills, placards, posters din into this brain the implacable injunction: “Your Country Needs YOU! Enlist immediately!” It is useless for him to turn away his head, for in that case, not only is he elbowed by ten of his compatriots in khaki, but suddenly his ears are greeted with the warlike strains of the military band preceding a detachment on its way to some railway station or barracks.’
He continued: ‘Everything reminds him [the Englishman] that the Empire is at war. On the walls, on the monuments, on the fronts of taxis, in the sho
p-windows, in the restaurants, the trains, the railway stations, on the motor-buses, in the churches and chapels, in the theatres and cinemas, even in the lavatories, there are bills and placards of all sizes to remind him that the British Empire is defending its existence, and that “Kitchener needs more men”. It is impossible not to see them and read them.’
Davray noted that one poster of Kitchener was especially popular, depicting ‘on the left, the stern and enigmatic countenance of Lord Kitchener, whilst on the right, are printed a few sentences from the famous speech which the Minister for War delivered at the Guildhall [9th July 1915].’ However, this poster was not a Leete design but rather the PRC poster with Kitchener’s words ‘Men, Materials & Money Are The Immediate Necessities. Does The Call Of Duty Find No Response In You Until Reinforced – Let Us Rather Say Superseded – By The Call Of Compulsion?’ This was officially known as the LORD KITCHENER poster and printed in two versions of different sizes: PRC 113 (20 x 30 inches) and PRC 117 (40 x 50 inches). The poster featured a close-up image of Kitchener’s face and part of his shoulders, referred to by Davray as ‘the stern and enigmatic countenance…’ There was no outstretched arm or pointing finger. By comparison with Leete’s striking cartoon, this PRC creation was a dull design.
A Stereoview card produced by the Realistic Travels company depicted Kitchener on a balcony at the Guildhall with the Lord Mayor of London. The card was captioned ‘The call which resounded around the world; Lord Kitchener’s magic appeal for men’ and depicted three pictorial posters affixed to the walls of the building: HE’S HAPPY & SATISFIED – ARE YOU? (PRC 96, printed by Turner and Dunnett); BE READY! (PRC 81, printed by David Allen and Sons); and AN APPEAL TO YOU (PRC 88, printed by Roberts and Leete). This final poster included a soldier with a beckoning finger, which some viewers may well have mistaken for Leete’s arm-stretching, finger-pointing design. This image was also used for an Australian poster.
The official ‘Lord Kitchener’ poster (KCL)
Kitchener at the Guildhall, London (Auth.)
Lord Kitchener: A Boy’s Own hero
Henry Davray was an ardent admirer of Kitchener and he relished the times that he was able to observe him in public: ‘I have seen Lord Kitchener in civilian attire; I have seen him in the sombre blue uniform of a field-marshal; I saw him at the Guildhall when he delivered, or rather read, a speech on recruiting. In each case, he was a fine figure, though perhaps a little stern and unbending. “I am a soldier,” he repeats, when he has to appear at these assemblies; and perhaps he is apologising for an embarrassment which is not discernible, but which he must feel, in spite of the cheers and acclamations which greet him. But it was in his khaki costume that Lord Kitchener really gave me the impression of a leader. Buttoned up in a dark-coloured jacket or tunic, he is the officer in mufti, whom we can recognise among a thousand; but he is a “soldier” from head to foot in his field uniform, with his spurs, his leather gaiters, his ample riding- breeches, his loosely-fitting tunic held in at the waist by a belt of yellow leather supported by a shoulder-piece. The red and gold decoration on the collar, the red band on the cap, and, on the peak, the double garland of gold leaves, are the distinctive signs of rank.’
He went on to describe Kitchener’s physical appearance: ‘In London, in public, the face is, so to speak, closed, the features are immobile; the solid jaw and the heavy moustache (still very fair) give an impression of strong will, the sternness of which is belied by the blue eyes, which express a kind of astonishment, doubtless the result of a strong desire to be somewhere else. As I saw him, during the whole of that day, the eyelids lowered over the eyes robbed them of that look of astonishment and rendered them, on the contrary, keen and penetrating. With untiring persistence he surveyed and inspected the soldiers, rank after rank.’
In another of Davray’s publications of 1916, entitled Lord Kitchener, His Work and Prestige (T. Fisher Unwin, London), he extolled the virtues of the British Secretary of State for War. The introduction, written by Paul Cambon, the Ambassador of the French Republic in London, also highlighted the support Kitchener had given to France during the war.
He wrote: ‘I have been for a long time in touch with that great servant of his country, but after the beginning of the war we were brought closer together, and had frequently to meet to discuss the manifold questions which were continually confronting our Governments… This grave, silent, rarely smiling man, who seemed a stranger to all emotion, displayed in personal contact qualities of the heart and a sensibility of which no one, at first, would have thought him capable. Reserved and secret as he was with men whose character he had not tested, he was open and confiding with those whose honesty and discretion he had been able to appreciate…
‘[H]e had the art of making men obey him. He knew that authority can be won only by commanding respect, and that excessive familiarity, empty words, and an effusive manner detract from the power to command… A strong will, a clear head, and also, it should be said, an uncommon aptness in judgment, gave him the authority and the prestige which he used at the outbreak of war in making that appeal to England to which the country responded with so huge an impulse.’
Both Cambon and Davray agreed that ‘Lord Kitchener was one of the most faithful friends of France’. These publications may well contain genuine sentiments but they can also be read as British propaganda. Prior to World War I, some anti-British propaganda was published in the French satirical magazine L’Assiette au Buerre. One notable example created by the artist and cartoonist Jean Veber depicted Lord Kitchener as a toad astride a mass of dead, bloodied bodies – a reference to the brutal behaviour of the British in South Africa during the Boer War, when camps were used to imprison civilians (that gave rise later to the term ‘concentration camp’).
Herkomer’s portrait of Kitchener (NPG)
Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, ADC, PC (1850–1916), was a highly decorated soldier, whose first name brings to mind the heroic deeds and derring-do of Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson (1758–1805). Not surprisingly, images of Nelson were also used for World War I recruitment posters. Aping Nelson, Kitchener also became a Boy’s Own hero, and, for many, an immensely popular one. One notable portrait of Kitchener in oils, dating from 1890, hangs on public display in the National Portrait Gallery, London, alongside that of Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell. Both paintings are the work of the well-known society portraitist and art teacher Hubert von Herkomer (although the background of Kitchener’s portrait was painted by landscape painter Frederick Goodall RA, celebrated for his Egyptian views). Baden-Powell was also noted for his military achievements and hailed as ‘The Hero of Mafeking’. Today he is best known as the founding father of the Scout movement, but he also made a personal contribution to the World War I recruitment campaign by designing what became a highly regarded poster of 1915, entitled ARE YOU IN THIS? (PRC 112).
Kitchener was an Irish-born British field marshal and proconsul who won fame for his imperial campaigns. Born at Ballylongford in County Kerry, he was the son of a British army colonel, Henry Horatio Kitchener. His mother, Ann, had died of tuberculosis in 1864. The family had moved to Switzerland in the hope of improving her medical condition but to no avail. Kitchener was tutored privately, received some schooling in Switzerland and after returning to England he also studied and trained at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and later at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham in Kent.8
Between 1871 and 1914, Kitchener had a varied but highly successful career. He worked for the Palestine Expedition Fund (PEF) on a mapping survey of the Holy Land that produced lasting results, and later served as a Vice-Consul in Anatolia. From 1884 to 1885, he served as a captain during the Nile Campaign. His human frailties became evident when he suffered a jaw wound during a skirmish, and he recuperated in England before returning to active service.
In 1889, Kitchener took part in the Battle of Toski, which brought an end to the thre
at of the Mahdist Sudanese in Egypt. When in command of his men, he ensured that his officers could speak Arabic, as he himself could do, to enable more effective communication and arguably better relations with the local people. At this time, before allegations of brutality appeared in relation to his military triumphs in the late 1890s, there were reports of Kitchener’s fairness and good standing among his officers, men and subordinates.
Baden-Powell’s recruitment poster (Priv.)
But what really brought Kitchener into the public spotlight to ensure him widespread and longstanding popular acclaim was the campaign that started in 1896 when, as Major General, he led British and Egyptian forces up the Nile. He helped to construct a railway to ensure the supply of arms and reinforcements, and played a significant role in defeating the Sudanese at the Battle of Omdurman, near Khartoum, on 2nd September 1898, thus helping to secure control of the Sudan in north-east Africa, after which he was given the title ‘Lord Kitchener of Khartoum’. As Chief of Staff (1900–02) in the Second Boer War he played a key role in Lord Roberts’ conquest of the Boer Republics, and later succeeded Roberts as Commander-in-Chief.9
Field Marshal Frederick Roberts (NAM)
Field Marshal Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts (1832–1914), was one of the most successful British commanders of the nineteenth century. In 1858, he had been awarded the Victoria Cross (VC) the highest military decoration awarded for valour ‘in the face of the enemy’, an accolade that eluded Kitchener. In 1915, after his death, Roberts’ portrait also featured in a successful PRC recruitment poster, HE DID HIS DUTY. WILL YOU DO YOURS?, of which 95,000 copies were printed. Emulating Roberts’ career path, from 1902 to 1909, Kitchener was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army of India, later returning to Egypt as British Agent and Consul-General.
