by Mark Rowe
Colin, later Lord, Davidson, was a 21-year-old private secretary to ‘Lulu’ Haldane, the minister for the colonies. When the 11pm deadline passed Davidson left the Foreign Office with a clerk, a major as a bodyguard, and a sheaf of telegrams in code to send to Britain’s colonies to tell them they were at war.
We went out into Downing Street which had been kept fairly free from the crowds as Whitehall was simply packed with a seething mass of people. We fought our way up Whitehall and unable to get through Trafalgar Square took a route through some side streets by way of the Strand. We got to the post office in the Strand which was still open and went in with the telegrams. We walked up to the counter and handed the telegrams over. The woman behind the counter did no more than just look at them. We didn’t even get a receipt for them ... we then started back to Downing Street to find thousands of people milling around shouting and singing and bursting with cheers. It was all very unpleasant. They did not know what they were in for and they had this awful war fever.
Here is another of the most-repeated stories (with photographs) of the outbreak of war; the cheering crowds in the capital cities; not only London, but Paris and Berlin. For some it’s proof that publics welcomed war. To anyone with business to do, the crowds were in the way. Davidson went back to the Colonial Office and waited for replies; Fiji, where it was the next day, acknowledged first.
What, if anything, were the gawpers there for? Did they catch, as Davidson suggested, ‘war fever’? The men in authority plainly disliked having so many common people around. Asquith for example in his memoirs found it ‘curious’ that going to and from Downing Street to parliament he was ‘always escorted and surrounded by cheering crowds of loafers and holiday-makers’. This was a burdened man, to say the least, angered by the ignorant and idle in his way. Were those people unwelcome to him because they, even without realising it, were holding him accountable? Or were they not anticipating war, but merely there out of curiosity? Even more vaguely, did the on-lookers wish to be around the making of history, something seldom on offer to them? If so, they were hanging around (it cost nothing) in the right place: the centre of government; politics; and, in nearby Fleet Street, newspapers. Some may have joined the crowds in London merely for the same reason everyone sat on the same seaside beaches, at Blackpool, Scarborough, and Skegness, every August; if so many were doing it, something about it had to be right.
In her memoirs Emily MacManus, then sister-in-charge of a ward at Guy’s Hospital, told of how she and other Guy’s men and women on August 4 ‘made our way through the evening crowds of restless, anxious people, to the great space in front of Buckingham Palace. War! Yes, it had come ... I was exhilarated ...’ After that 11pm deadline to Germany passed, King George, Queen Mary and Edward, Prince of Wales went onto the balcony, to cheers and the singing of God Save the King. Even after their majesties went in again, thousands stayed. This went on before and after the outbreak of war. One anonymous reporter described the crowd as ‘Cockneys from the East End, sight-seers, fashionable ladies and top-hatted swells, all showing their love for the Old Country and its Sovereign’, waiting to see their majesties, and cheering at the slightest new thing, such as a raised flag and the guards. The noisier sorts sang patriotic songs and parodies of Germany, ‘probably made up on the spot’. These ‘loafers’, as Asquith spotted, were tourists wanting to see something, or Londoners with time on their hands. The centre of London has always been the place to go after work, if you do not have meals to cook or children to put to bed. After all, during a bank holiday, bank workers among others were on holiday, and in case of a panic run on the banks Lloyd George ordered an unheard-of extra three days of bank holidays, for the Tuesday to Thursday. On that Thursday evening, August 6, Robert Ramsey stood outside Buckingham Palace for the second time that week. As he lived in Ladbroke Square to the west and worked as a solicitor in the City, Buckingham Palace was on his way home. After work (and dinner) he found ‘a large crowd assembled ... which gradually increased until there must have been four or five thousand people’:
.... cheering from time to time and singing snatches of God Save the King and Rule Britannia. At last towards ten o’clock the blind was drawn up, the French window thrown open, and the Queen appeared in white standing between the King and the Prince of Wales and remained for some minutes. The crowd cheered frantically as one man, waved hats and flags and sang God Save the King. One man had two large flags, a tricolour and a Union Jack which he held high to catch the king’s attention. This continued until the royal party withdrew, the king pausing for a moment or two at the closed window. Then the crowd woke up and started away down the Mall in perfect order and good humour.
Some argued afterwards that people headed for the palace seeking a consoling figure at a confusing time. Or it may have been that the people were not paying homage to the monarchy, but showing their power, of a sort; they coaxed the king and queen to appear. As Ramsey went to the theatre and concerts - judging by the programmes between the pages of his diary - he, and we, can see something theatrical in it all: the crowd making music (as if wooing the king outside?), and the royal family - once they had dined - acting their part. Once the royals had made their bows, their public went home satisfied. Something may have drawn people to the palace; or nothing. As Ramsey suggested, nothing came of the evening; it was an entertaining break from daily reality, like a dream (‘the crowd woke up’) or an evening at the theatre (only free). What was political, let alone warlike, about it?
In a world before radio, where someone from Britain’s government had to walk to a post office to tell its empire it was at war, we should not forget that some people made for where news would break first: central London. The weekly Willesden Chronicle, the Friday after the declaration of war, recalled that instead of the usual bank holiday Monday ‘gaiety of crowds’, anxious people were ‘eagerly waiting for the various editions of the newspapers as they came to hand’, sold on the streets by ‘Fleet Street runners’ shouting the headlines. As ever, not everyone felt the same. Robert Ramsey in his diary wrote of that week: “Nights are now made hideous by people calling ‘newspapers’.”
The craving for news can explain at least some in the crowds in any of the capitals going to war, even Wellington in New Zealand. The thousands gathered in the grounds of parliament, to hear the governor repeat the first message of the war from the king - on Wednesday afternoon, August 5, their time - is the most poignant of all the scenes of August 1914. What drew the listeners was more powerful even than war. Some New Zealanders, like Australians and Canadians, felt deep home-sickness for the country they had left behind, that they called the ‘old’, or, tellingly, the ‘mother country’. The guilt they felt for leaving family behind felt even worse now their homeland was in danger. The colonies offered England help so quickly because they hoped it might give them a chance to visit (on the cheap).
V
True, some greeted the outbreak of war with cheers, not boos. Cheers for what, exactly? For whatever it was their leaders decided? For dead men across Europe, at a cost of (so the Hull Daily News speculated) £1,000,000,000, that would have to come from somewhere? “All wars are popular on the day of their declaration,” wrote Lloyd George in his memoirs, with the wisdom of a man after the event. People, even the people who went on to die in the war, cheered because it was something exciting; something for a change; something that had not done anything bad to them yet.
Arthur Ross and the Church Lads Brigade lads from Beverley were, as locals, among the first of 1500 lads, from Carlisle and Alnwick to Sheffield, to pitch tents at Seamer, three-and-a-half miles south of Scarborough. They arrived at the village station at 10am on Wednesday July 29, asked the way, and marched into summer camp with their kitbags, singing On The Mississippi. The lads had so little to do for the first couple of days, they were allowed to enjoy Scarborough all afternoon; walking the pier, eating ices and chocolate, sending postcards. Stepping off the 10p
m train at Seamer they walked to camp ‘singing wild to mouth organs, ‘Hello, hello, who’s your lady friend’’, Ross wrote. Their pleasures were as simple as the food in camp - bread and butter, or jam, or brawn; pork pie, and coffee - and the drum-head service after tea on Sunday: “The Bishop of Hull delivered a fine address and spoke of one of Rudyard Kipling’s yarns.” As in the Territorials’ summer camps around the coast, the lads did some drill, and had plenty of time to read and chat, because their officers no more wanted a hard time than anyone else. It all became serious on Monday August 3, as captured by Ross’ clipped prose:
Reveille 5.30. No hot coffee. Adjutant’s parade 630 (company drill). Tent inspection. Parade 10. The brigadier made us a fine speech. ‘England is preparing for a great war,’ he said. ‘If anything happens to annoy you, take it like sportsmen.’ God Save the King was sung and then three cheers given. Half an hour afterwards a telegram came for the Brigadier and he left camp. He had been called up.
Everyone was excited and talked of the possibility of war. A visitor’s Daily Mirror was ‘nearly torn to bits, so anxious were we to see news’, Ross recalled. The Beverley lads were that evening’s camp guard. As Ross posted the first sentries, an officer told him of orders to strike the camp that night. Likewise, around the country, Territorials were going home early, to be readier to mobilise if the order came. The guards opened the gate to the first lot of lads marching out, singing Rule Britannia ‘good enough to wake the dead’. This change from normal - and the strength in anonymity in the dark felt by a thousand lads - prompted a carnival. Or as Ross put it, the camp ‘went mad’:
We could see the mess tent lighted up and you could have heard the row a mile off. The voices absolutely drowned the piano. The guard was rushed twice by parties of lads not leaving till after midnight who wanted to go into the town first for a spree. We held them back the second but not the first time. I had a flash lamp and as the various companies left camp I was able to pick out my friends and say goodbye.
By 2.30am, only the local Beverley ‘fatigue boys’ who would have to unpack the camp were left. Ross, doing his duty, walked round the sentries, and with his commander Captain Hobson: “We saw the Bishop coming back to Camp. Although an old man he had marched to the station and seen the lads off and then walked back.” The Bishop of Hull, Francis Gurdon, was in fact in his late fifties, and presumably looked old to the teenage Ross. The lads ate breakfast on the grass outside the guard tent - ‘eggs, coffee, bread, butter tea and cakes’ - and Ross bought a newspaper from a visitor for the war news. They slept, and after tea went into Scarborough for a shave and to visit the aquarium again. On the Wednesday, August 5, a captain read from the newspaper of the declaration of war on Germany. “Bishop of Hull made a speech to whole fatigue after breakfast and sung national anthem. Bishop leaves camp in midst of cheers.” Whether because camp was cut short, or because he wanted to grab every chance of leisure, Ross did not go home at once; he got off the train at Filey for three hours, walked the cliffs, and with three lads had tea in a cafe for three shillings and elevenpence-ha’penny: “I kept odd half pence as a souvenir.” His father, no doubt anxious, met Ross at Beverley railway station at 8pm. The lads marched to the town drill hall, “some of us keen on joining forces, told Captain Hobson. He asked us to wait.” The next morning, when Ross went into town after breakfast and a shave, he found the ‘town in an excited state’.
VI
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Matthew 7:18
Ross, in camp, acted like half a soldier already. He, Arthur Allinson, and other Beverley Church Lads volunteered to their Captain Hobson to become Territorials. Civilians meanwhile had no experience of how, if at all, to react to a European war. William Swift, the retired Gloucestershire villager, on his shopping visits by train to nearby Gloucester, similarly found that the supposedly more worldly townspeople were losing their heads. On Tuesday August 4, he rose at 6.15am and caught the 10.17am from Churchdown, to bank the cash from the church collection, only to find the extra bank holiday. A shop ‘obligingly gave me silver for my coppers’. He bought bacon and kidney at Pardoe’s the butcher: “Mrs P not in the most amicable state of mind and a man told her she seemed to have the war fever.”
Swift bought some extra strong peppermints he was fond of ‘and took a slight refreshment’ - he did not say what - ‘near the Northgate railway bridge’. As he returned in the company of ‘Canon and Mrs Bedwell’, he cannot have been too refreshed. Only he and the vicar were at evensong at 8pm; evidently the crisis was not sending the people to church. Swift closed the day by reading St Matthew’s gospel and Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides.
While his home, garden and village life went on, four of his old scholars, as Territorial soldiers, had left by train. “A young man (Mayo’s) who brings us the par-oil [paraffin] says some of the people seemed demented in trying to obtain as much as they could get; one man who usually has two barrels actually ordered 12.” Everywhere, shoppers were buying flour, ‘and anything that would keep’, such as Quaker oats, canned fruit and Golden Syrup, as the weekly Harrow Observer reported on the Friday. Did a housewife have to stock up on syrup?
Some newspapers, such as the Uttoxeter Advertiser in Staffordshire, admitted it was a week of panic, that would only cause the shortages that the panic-buyers were trying to beat, and encouraged shops to charge more. Flour became ‘practically unobtainable’, the Advertiser reported; the price of sugar more than doubled. Whose panic was making it dearer for everyone else? “Private motor cars went away laden from some shops on Tuesday morning,” the Advertiser said - that is, as soon as doors opened after the bank holiday - “and prices commenced to rise a little later.” A solicitor in Walsall, Lenton Lester, made it even plainer at a meeting of town traders who was guilty - ‘the wealthy’, the few people who could afford a car, the very ones who could, as Mr Lester said, afford a penny or two extra.
The panic-buyers, naturally, did not offer their names to the public, or even admit to themselves that they were panicking. They, like the Gothard family, were only looking after themselves, and - as good customers - traders wanted to look after them. Clifford Gothard wrote for Saturday August 1 that he went to bed ‘after letting in a man with a lot of groceries from Oakden’s’: “Everyone is afraid of a rise in prices all around; there was a panic rush for groceries this morning. We managed to get ours all right. We cleared Wright’s and Oakden’s out of biscuits by buying a very few lbs.” That was as much as anyone would admit, even in their diary.
Traders, too, made excuses. Retailers could blame wholesalers, who could blame shippers. Some perishables, in fairness, became short right away. If fishing fleets could not sail in case of enemy warships, or because the fishermen who were also naval reservists had joined the fleet, fish would be scarce and cost more. Other costs would rise with time; ships could sink and cost more to insure. The question then became: if Europe’s markets drew on the world, and all Europe - all the world, perhaps - was at war, what would be the new cost of doing business? Some shopkeepers had the courage to limit customers’ grocery orders, or the decency to limit their profits. Others wanted to use the crisis to bump up their profits as much as they could get away with. It was the commercial equivalent of the main powers of Europe mobilising armies; if anyone above you in the chain of selling raised prices but you did not, you would suffer; if anyone below in the chain raised prices but not you, you were a fool. Often the profiteering businessmen were the worst-run or the downright crooked in peacetime, such as the Rhodesia Trading Company in southern Africa. Its joint MD Arthur Suter wrote to England from the capital Salisbury in August 1914:
The chambers of commerce have taken up a very philanthropic attitude as to raising the price of actual foodstuffs on present stocks and in Bulawayo practically threatened to boycott any Trader who did so. This has somewhat upset my proposed general in
crease of about 15 per cent but there are a few good lines on which we have managed to secure a very considerably increased profit and we must bide our time for the remainder.
As with any panic buying, people did not suddenly eat more, or burn more paraffin. The extra fuss during the panic evened itself out with quiet afterwards. The Hull architect, cricket-watcher and diarist George Thorp went into his regular grocers, Brown Cox and Holmes, on Saturday August 8, ‘to learn the why and the wherefore’. Why had the flour they delivered cost two shillings and sixpence a stone - as it turned out, more than double the price before, and after? Why did the tinned beef not come at all? “Found them in a state of collapse, had been working for 33 hours on end. On the previous Tuesday had called with the usual order and found no flour or bacon was to be had. On Wednesday and Thursday they were closed.” Thorp and his grocer saw the panic was over: “I believe I was the second person in the shop that morning. Parted good friends.” At least Thorp had a grocer to go to; Kress, his pork butcher, was among the Germans arrested.
Part Two
England at War
Chapter 8
The News
We and the French had to defend ourselves; it is as simple as that.
Within the Fringe: An Autobiography, by Viscount Stuart of Findhorn (1967)
The horror of joining in the silly fray was less than the danger of dishonour of keeping out.
The Mist Procession: The Autobiography of Lord Vansittart (1958)
