Myths and Legends of the First World War

by James Hayward

  The enduring spy mania inspired countless dramatic and literary works of varying quality. During the first two and a half years of the war no fewer than 50 plays concerning spies were submitted to the Lord Chancellor’s office, all of which were produced, and during 1917 and 1918 a further 43 spy dramas were performed. One of the first was a popular play, The Man Who Stayed at Home, written by Lechmere Worral and Harold Terry, and based squarely on scaremongering rumours. The piece was set in an East Coast boarding house kept by a woman whose first husband was a German general, and whose son was a spy at the Admiralty. The hero, a monocled fop, at one point accepts a white feather from his fiancée, which he puts into his pipe and smokes. He is able to risk doing so because, unbeknownst to his dearly beloved, he is busy breaking up a local spy ring. The play offered an abundance of cliché: there was a naturalized German governess and a Dutch waiter who kept pigeons, each with a map or message tied to its leg. Behind the fireplace lurked a secret wireless set, while a U-boat skulked offshore, awaiting the requisite signal. The play spawned a number of imitators. In Time of War offered a German princess-spy, who passed herself off as a nurse while adding poison to the hospital water filters. Even as late as October 1918 yet another melodrama set on the East Coast, The Female Hun, climaxed with a British general shooting dead his treacherous wife, less than half an hour after his butler had been shot as a spy.

  The writer John Buchan took full advantage of the spy mania, and found a huge audience for his celebrated trilogy of Richard Hannay adventures: The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle and Mr Standfast. The first of these appeared in 1915, and swiftly elevated Buchan to the front rank of British novelists, although by day Buchan was variously employed as a journalist and propaganda writer. The book’s central and complicated chase sequence offered a vivid image of Scottish glens bristling with enemy agents, while the rest is a potent cocktail of derring-do and high intrigue. The central premise on which the trilogy is based is given early in The Thirty-Nine Steps: ‘Away behind all the Governments and the armies there was a big subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people.’ At the centre of the web is a sinister master spy who has to be outwitted by Hannay, the heroic colonial adventurer. In Mr Standfast, published in 1918, Hannay is ordered to infiltrate a cell of pacifists in the fictional town of Biggleswick, where treason is afoot, and proceeds to ‘sink down deep into the life of the half-baked’. The books were skilfully written, and reinforced the popular myth of the ubiquity and cunning of German espionage networks – ruthless, exploitative, and endlessly wicked.

  Arthur Conan Doyle also exploited the spy scare to bring Sherlock Holmes out of retirement for the second and last time. The short story His Last Bow was first published in the Strand Magazine and Collier’s in September 1917, and was originally subtitled ‘the war service of Sherlock Holmes’. The story itself is set at the beginning of August 1914 and concerns Von Bork, the chief German spymaster in Britain. On the eve of war Von Bork prepares to return to Germany with a rich haul of stolen documents, while awaiting the arrival of his chief informant, Altamont, who has gained possession of the key to the Royal Navy’s signal codes. When Altamont appears, however, he overpowers the German, ties him up, and is revealed as Sherlock Holmes. It transpires that Holmes has also netted all of Von Bork’s agents, and ensured that the information previously sent back to Berlin is entirely false. In the epilogue, supplied by the great detective himself, Holmes reveals that he was at first extremely reluctant to return to detection, and had been persuaded to don his deerstalker once more only after a personal intervention by the Prime Minister. Largely because of its overtly propagandistic intent, the book lacks the brilliance of its classic forebears, but proved popular enough in its day.

  As the war progressed, the essentially naive spy mania of 1914 hardened into a more pernicious (if no more sophisticated) belief in the existence of a so-called Hidden Hand, involving a network of highly placed establishment figures bent on undermining the Allied war effort. This early form of the conspiracy theory is examined more thoroughly in Chapter Seven, but now a series of entirely harmless myths, which emerged during the first twelve months of the conflict, will be considered – the Russians in England, and the Angel of Mons.

  2

  The Russians in England

  During the first few chaotic weeks of war, even the rampant spy mania was eclipsed by a widespread belief that thousands of Russian troops had landed in Scotland, and were passing through Britain on their way to the Western Front.

  The story first entered into circulation during the last week in August, and spread with astonishing speed as eyewitness reports were received from every corner of the country. From the outset the press treated the story with a degree of caution, and so the rumour was spread almost exclusively by word of mouth. The Russians were observed landing at Aberdeen, Leith and Glasgow; they were fed at York, Crewe and Colchester; they were observed smoking cigars in closed carriages and stamping snow from their boots on station platforms. The supposed fount of information was invariably an anonymous railway porter. At Carlisle and Berwick-on-Tweed the Russian troops called hoarsely for vodka, and at Durham even managed to jam a penny-in-the-slot machine with a rouble. Four Russian soldiers were billeted with a lady at Crewe, who described the difficulty of cooking for Slavonic appetites. Rifles and lances were spotted in guards’ vans, and waiting transports spotted at Folkestone, destined for Le Havre. By early September the American press had picked up on the story, and the number was variously estimated at between 50,000 and ‘little short of a million’. It was commonly believed that the Russians were bound for the Western Front, although some offered that their allotted task was to seize the Kiel Canal. It was even suggested, less kindly, that the Russians would throw in their lot with the Hun once they had crossed the Channel.

  Successive variations on the basic legend, and the manner in which such stories were usually circulated, were recorded by the Reverend Andrew Clark, the rector of the village of Great Leighs in Essex:

  Friday 28 August: Report current in Braintree – that a Russian force has been brought to Yorkshire and landed there; and that the East Coast trains have been commandeered to transport them rapidly south en route for the French theatre of war.

  Sunday 30 August: On my way to church . . . Miss Lucy Tritton met me, jumped off her bicycle and told me that her father had heard from someone in the ‘Home’ office (she said) that a large Russian force from Archangel had landed in Scotland and was being speeded south by rail to take its place in the theatre of war in Belgium. I mentioned the report of Saturday’s evening paper, that a train-load of 200 Russians escaped from Germany into Switzerland and France, had reached England. But Miss Tritton was positive that her information was authentic and correct.

  Wednesday 2 September: Dr Young of Braintree told Miss Mildred Clark that on Sunday the Russian troops were fed in Colchester . . .

  Thursday 3 September: Letter from Oxford from my aunt . . . ‘It was said last Friday that 80,000 Russians passed through here, No-one was allowed to see them. But for several days, only one passenger train was running, and the railway would not send luggage in advance.’

  Monday 7 September: Montague Edwards Hughes-Hughes, JP, of Leez Priory told me that an old servant of his had written that from her bedroom window she had watched train after train for hours, passing by night to Bristol. There were no lights in the carriages, but by the light of the cigars and cigarettes they were smoking, the black beards of the Russians could be seen.

  In Perthshire, on hearing news that the Russians were passing through Scotland on their way to Belgium, Lady Olave Baden-Powell hastened to the nearest railway station to watch them pass through. Two days later she noted: ‘Russian rumour now denied by General Ewart, who commands Scotland and ought to know.’ In the same county one clearly deluded landowner boasted that no fewer than 125,000 Cossacks had crossed his estates. The South Wales Echo quoted an engineer named Champion, who vouched that he had s
ailed with the Russians from Archangel, and had been with the 192nd trainload to pass through York. A correspondent told the Daily Mail how more than a million Russians has passed through Stroud in a single night. Sir George Young was converted to belief in the tale by no less a person than Sir Courtenay Ilbert, clerk to the House of Commons, who found the many circumstantial accounts too persuasive to reject.

  Yet another clutch of Russian rumours was recorded by Vera Brittain, whose diary formed the basis of her celebrated memoir Testament of Youth. Entries in early September record:

  Only that day I had heard from my dentist that a hundred thousand Russians had landed in England; ‘a whole trainful of them,’ I reported, ‘is said to have passed through Stoke, so that is why the Staffordshire people are so wise.’ But when I returned to Buxton I learnt that a similar contingent had been seen in Manchester, and for a few days the astonishing ubiquitousness of the invisible Russians formed a topic of absorbing interest at every tea-table throughout the country. By the time, however, that we started believing in Russians, England had become almost accustomed to the War.

  Two decades later, the writer and journalist Arthur Machen offered an interesting parallel with his own legend of bowmen and angels at Mons:

  Some people may remember that England had an earlier source of comfort and consolation. I should say assurance, for I think it was almost in the first days of the war . . . that everybody was talking of ‘the Russians.’ ‘300,000 Rooshians,’ as Jos Sedley assured his sister, Amelia, were coming to our assistance. Their trains had been observed passing with drawn blinds, through Ealing, Moreton-on-the-Marsh, Rugby Junction – through any station and every station. There were myriad on myriads of them – and your friends got extremely cross if you hinted a doubt.

  But the Russian hosts faded gently away, and the British army was left to fight its own battles at Ypres and elsewhere. And the Bowmen, who had turned into Angels, took the place of the forces of the Czar. Great numbers of people made up their minds that the story was true from beginning to end.

  News of the Russians was spread by some who should have known better. Lord Wester Wemyss, then the Rear-Admiral commanding the Channel-based 12th Cruiser Squadron, recorded the following in his diary:

  In letters from various friends I had heard many rumours of the presence of vast hordes of Russian troops in England on their way to the battlefields of France, but I could not bring myself to believe in the story. If indeed they were being embarked at Archangel, why not disembark them at Brest? But I received on September 3rd a letter from a very old friend, Commander Gerald Digby, who had retired many years ago but was now working at the Admiralty, telling me as a fact that 80,000 Russian troops were embarking at Southampton, truly a marvel.

  One can only guess at the reasons why so ‘stolid’ a man as Commander Digby succumbed to such fevered enthusiasm, unless the Admiralty were deliberately spreading the rumour to bolster morale. The point about Brest is well made, and in the main the British press held the story at arm’s length. Of the nationals, only the Daily Mail and Evening News published articles, which were respectively satirical and sceptical. The myth in its various forms was also gently derided by Michael McDonagh of The Times, who recorded on September 8th that: There is being circulated everywhere a story that an immense force of Russian soldiers – little short of a million, it is said – have passed, or are still passing, through England on their way to France. They are being brought from Archangel – just in time before that port was closed by ice – landed at Leith, and carried at night in hundreds of trains straight to ports on the south coast. This great news is vouched by people likely to be well informed, but is being kept secret by the authorities – not a word about it is allowed in the newspapers – until all the Russians have arrived at the Western Front. It is said in confirmation that belated wayfarers at railway stations throughout the country saw long train after long train running through with blinds down, but still allowing glimpses of carriages packed with fierce-looking bearded fellows in fur hats.

  What a surprise in store for the Germans when they find themselves faced on the west with hordes of Russians, while other hordes are pressing on them from the east.

  Lord Bertie, the British Ambassador to France, noted the rumour in Paris on the same date:

  Many people here will have it that 50,000 Russians have landed in England, en route for France; they do not say how they got to England! A Regent of the Bank of France was quoted to me as a good authority; my answer was that there are foolish Regents . . . Bob Vyner saw the Russians at Victoria Station! There is hardly anything that people will not believe or invent.

  Since the rumour had a measure of military and propaganda value, at first the Press Bureau took no steps to deny it. Indeed when a telegram from Rome on September 9th appeared to give official confirmation of the presence of 250,000 Russian troops in France, the response given by the Bureau was suitably ambiguous: there could be no confirmation of the statements contained in the message, yet no objection to them being published. As a result the papers became more open in reporting the story, for example the Daily News for September 9th published the following:

  The official sanction to the publication of the above (the telegram from Rome) removes the newspaper reserve with regard to the rumours which for the last fortnight have coursed with such astonishing persistency through the length and breadth of England. Whatever be the unvarnished truth about the Russian forces in the West, so extraordinary has been the ubiquity of the rumours in question, that they are almost more amazing if they are false than if they are true. Either a baseless rumour had obtained a currency and a credence perhaps unprecedented in history, or, incredible as it may appear, it is a fact that Russian troops, whatever the number may be, have been disembarked and passed through this country, while not one man in ten thousand was able to say with certainty whether their very existence was not a myth.

  Five days later, on September 14th, the same paper displayed less caution when running a curious dispatch filed by P.J. Philip, its special correspondent in France. According to the News, his report served to prove ‘the correctness of the general impression that Russian troops have been moved through England’, although precisely who or what Philip saw with his own eyes remains unclear.

  Tonight, in an evening paper, I find the statement ‘de bonne source’ that the German Army in Belgium has been cut . . . by the Belgian Army reinforced by Russian troops. The last phrase unseals my pen. For two days I have been on a long trek looking for the Russians, and now I have found them – where and how it would not be discreet to tell, but the published statement that they are here is sufficient, and of my own knowledge I can answer for their presence.

  That same day, September 14th, and with the Battle of the Marne now won, the story was officially and firmly denied by the Press Bureau, which stated:

  There is no truth whatever in the rumours that Russian soldiers have either landed in or passed through Great Britain on their way to France or Belgium. The statement that Russian troops are now on Belgian or French soil may also be discredited.

  The next day the Evening News met this bulletin with a compendium of typical reports:

  All roads lead to Rome, and the railroad from Archangel led everywhere. The Cossacks were seen – though the blinds were always down – at Peckham, at Chichester, at York, at Bristol, at Ealing, at Darlington, on Ludgate Hill Bridge, at Evesham, at Peterborough. A grey cloud of fierce, whiskered men went rolling down to Cheltenham, at Euston their passing closed the station for 36 hours; at Rugby they drank great draughts of coffee. In the East End children playing by the railway embankment were gladdened with showers of Russian money thrown to them from a passing train. Cossacks swarmed at Southampton, and a London milkman, clattering his cans to salute the dawn, saw the myriads of the north march past him in the silent, awful streets . . .

  Of course, there was always this suspicious circumstance; you never met a man who had seen the Russians. You met a ma
n who knew a man who had seen the Russians; and this should have aroused our suspicions.

  Naturally enough, not everyone was prepared to accept that the ‘fierce-looking fellows’ sporting beards, cigars and fur hats were a fiction, as McDonagh noted in his journal on September 15th:

  London is depressed today. The flower of our fondest hope has been suddenly blighted. The Press Bureau has issued an absolute denial of the rumour so widely credited a few days ago that an immense force of Russians had reached the Western Front through this country. Like everybody else. I kept the ball a-rolling, and the only excuse that can be offered is that it was a case of the wish being father to the thought. Indeed, looking back on the rumour now, the wonder is how it ever came to be believed in. Why, it not only invited suspicion but shouted for it. The story of railway porters at Edinburgh having had to sweep the snow out of the carriages of the trains conveying the Russians ought to have been sufficient to damn the rumour.

  Still, there are people so happily constituted that their faith in the story is strengthened rather than shaken by the official denial. ‘Believe you me,’ they say with a delightful air of confidence, ‘the contradiction is meant to deceive the Germans. The Russian Army is on the Western Front all right.’