Myths and Legends of the First World War

by James Hayward

  Just as the spy mania of 1914 had been fuelled by a sensationalist play, The Man Who Stayed at Home, now a patriotic film helped to boost public belief in the reality of an invisible hand. In It is For England (later reissued as The Hidden Hand) offered up a young army chaplain reincarnated on the battlefield as St George returns to England to harangue the nation on the Teutonic peril. As well as addressing Parliament (a scene in which extras were joined by real MPs), St George also states his case to City businessmen and industrial rebels. Backed by the Navy League, the film also featured many of the mythical spy devices which had made The Man Who Stayed at Home such a populist hit.

  A measure of the credulous atmosphere in which these popular protests took place was given by the diarist and Times journalist Michael McDonagh, writing on December 1st 1916:

  The news editor, Gordon Robbins, rushed into the reporting room this morning shouting that he had got a delicious letter in reference to the ‘Hidden Hand’ meeting last night . . . It said: ‘I have to tell you of a discovery we made at our meeting tonight. A German spy was found taking notes of the speeches. When questioned he pretended to be a reporter from The Times, and was disguised as a Nonconformist minister. I enclose the card he gave us.’

  The card was Jack Turner’s, an old member of the reporting staff . . . His story, as he told it in his serious way, was very funny. He was sitting alone at the Press table, taking notes of the chairman’s opening remarks, when a woman in a high state of excitement, leant over his shoulder and looking at his note-book, asked peremptorily what he was writing. ‘Shorthand’ was his simply reply. ‘That is not shorthand; I know Pitman; it’s German,’ the woman exclaimed, snatching the note book. Turner writes in an old system of shorthand, called Taylor’s, which at a casual glance might well be mistaken for German characters.

  The woman interrupted the proceedings with a loud shout of ‘Mr Chairman, there’s a German spy here,’ and throwing the note-book to the chairman, added, ‘Look at that!’ The chairman and others on the platform examined the notebook, and for a time appeared to be suspicious as to its purpose, but in the end gave it back to Turner in exchange for his card.

  Whereas the main focus of spy mania remained aliens and foreigners, enemy or otherwise, the myth of the Hidden Hand tended to throw suspicion on Britons, many of them senior Establishment figures. Somewhere in between these two extremes fell the fantastical ‘poison plot’ of 1917, the denouement of which was the trial at the Old Bailey of four highly unlikely individuals charged with conspiring to murder David Lloyd George and his Minister Without Portfolio, Arthur Henderson, by means of darts tipped with curare.

  Alice Wheeldon, aged 51, was a dealer in second-hand clothes who lived with her daughter Harriet, a scripture teacher, in the Midlands railway town of Derby. Both were ardent socialists, and prior to the outbreak of war had been active Suffragettes in the Women’s Social and Political Union. Both mother and daughter opposed conscription, and Alice Wheeldon’s home became a safe haven for conscientious objectors and other fugitives on the run from military service. Indeed her son William was already in custody as a hard-core conscientious objector, having refused to perform national service of any kind. The pair also helped to smuggle evaders abroad to Ireland and America, and had links with various radical groups including the Socialist Labour Party, and far-left union officials deported from Clydeside by governmental decree. The Wheeldons were rank-and-file radicals who displayed a high degree of disaffection, and occupied a lower-middle class milieu in which feminism, socialism and pacifism found common cause.

  In December 1916 a man calling himself Alec Gordon sought shelter with the Wheeldons. He claimed to be a fugitive, and having won their confidence introduced the two women to one Comrade Bert, who in turn claimed to be an army deserter and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. In fact both men were agents employed by a special intelligence section within the Ministry of Munitions, whose activities were later absorbed within the Special Branch and MI5. ‘Alec Gordon’ was the false identity of Mr F. Vivian, and ‘Comrade Bert’ a more senior agent named Herbert Booth, a former barrister’s clerk. Both operatives subsequently laid information that Alice Wheeldon was plotting to assassinate Lloyd George on the grounds that he was the politician behind conscription and the Military Service Acts. To achieve this end Wheeldon had obtained some poisons from her son-in-law, Alfred Mason, a laboratory attendant at Hartley University College in Southampton, thus drawing him and her other daughter Winnie Mason into the plot. Alfred Mason, aged 24, was said to share the views of his relatives on the general conduct of the war, and circumstantial evidence suggests that Alice Wheeldon had made arrangements to secure his passage to America when his call-up came.

  The poisons provided by Mason arrived in Derby by post in January 1917, together with directions for use. The four phials contained both strychnine and curare, the latter an unusual poison which is harmless if taken internally, but deadly when introduced into a wound. The toxin was said to operate on the nerves and muscles, causing paralysis, and eventually death, through failure of the respiratory system. The poison came from South American tree bark, where it was used on arrows by Indians. Chief among its advantages was that it left no trace which could be identified by analysis or post mortem examination of the victim. At trial it would be alleged that Alfred Mason was ‘a chemist of very considerable skill’ who had made a special study of poisons generally and curare in particular, the qualities of which were known to very few.

  Together with Alice Wheeldon and her two daughters, Mason was charged under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 with conspiring to murder Lloyd George and Henderson, and with soliciting Herbert Booth to carry out the killing. The Attorney-General himself appeared for the prosecution, and all four defendants entered pleas of Not Guilty. Of the Ministry agents, only Booth gave evidence at trial. By his account, which was uncorroborated, the Wheeldons were hardened political terrorists who had burned down a church in Breadsall, and tried to kill Reginald McKenna, the Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1915 and 1916, by sending him a skull containing a poisoned needle. Alice Wheeldon was also said to have observed the need to kill Lloyd George:

  Lloyd George has been the cause of millions of innocent lives being sacrificed. He shall be killed to stop it. We Suffragettes had a plot before when we spent £300 in trying to poison him. Our idea was to get a position in an hotel where he was staying and drive a nail through his boot that had been dipped in poison; but he went to France.

  The evidence offered by Alice Wheeldon was at some variance. By her version, the poison was needed to kill guard dogs at the ‘concentration camps’ where conscientious objectors were being held, although for the Crown a Major Kimber stated that nowhere were dogs used for this purpose. Although Alice Wheeldon denied the charges, her words and conduct in court did her defence few favours. On one occasion, the judge, Mr Justice Low, disdainfully noted ‘a considerable amount of levity’ in the dock, and instructed defending counsel to caution his clients. In evidence, Alice Wheeldon stated that in sheltering ‘COs’ she knew she was breaking the law, but did not mind for she had a perfect right to help circumvent what she considered an iniquitous act:

  Q: Have you a strong feeling against those specially responsible for introducing this iniquitous Act of Parliament?

  A: Yes.

  Q: And in particular against Mr Lloyd George?

  A: Yes.

  Q: And you regard Mr Henderson as a traitor to the working classes?

  A: I have said so.

  Q: And your feeling towards Mr Lloyd George is one of the strongest possible antagonism – would it be true, for instance, to say that you hate Mr Lloyd George?

  A: I do (This answer was given with energy).

  Q: You would like to do him a mischief?

  A: He’s not worth it.

  Q: But if he was, you would?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Do you mean that?

  A: I feel very strongly agains
t him.

  Q: Bitterly?

  A: Yes.

  Q: And you think it would be a good thing if his career came to an end?

  The witness was understood to assent with the qualification ‘public career’. She expressed her belief that the Prime Minister had done immense harm, was a source of mischief particularly to the working classes, and had been the occasion of the sacrifice of thousands of lives. She considered that he ought to be punished, severely punished. She did not remember saying that the ******* should be killed to stop it. She admitted that she had spoken of the Prime Minister in very obscene terms, and admitted that one particularly foul expression put to her by the Attorney-General was a favourite mode of her expressing her disapproval. She had said he ought to be killed. Pressed on the point, however, she said she did not think it now, adding ‘We often say in our bitterness things we do not mean.’ She meant it at the time.

  Q: And did you say that another who ought to be done in was George of Buckingham Palace?

  A: Very likely.

  Q: And you meant it?

  A: I did at that time in my bitterness.

  Q: Have you changed your opinion since?

  A: I refuse to answer the question.

  In further cross-examination, Alice Wheeldon said she did not think that from first to last anything was said to Booth about dogs. She denied that she had ever said that Walton Heath would be the best place to catch Lloyd George with an air gun. At that time she did not know that Mr Lloyd George’s house at Walton Heath had been burned down by Suffragettes.

  The trial lasted five days, which included the re-opening of the case before a reconstituted jury owing to the illness of one of the original members. In his summing-up, defending counsel, a Mr Riza, submitted that the prosecution was ‘scandalous, vile and vindictive’ and an affront to public justice. Riza made much of the fact that ‘Alec Gordon’ had not been produced to the court, and ventured that the employment of ‘mysterious secret government agents’ was un-British. Bizarrely, Riza then suggested that in keeping with the odd and somewhat farcical nature of the case, the proper mode of trial should be trial by ordeal:

  LOW I am afraid that has been abolished.

  RIZA That is why I submit it to the jury.

  LOW You cannot submit it to the jury.

  RIZA I think it is my duty.

  LOW That the ladies should walk over hot ploughshares or something of that kind? Is that it?

  RIZA I do suggest that, Mr Lord, in order that they may prove their innocence.

  LOW It is no use putting that. If you have anything serious to suggest I should like to hear it.

  Mr Riza concluded by saying that the prisoners were English to the backbone. It was ridiculous to suggest that Mr Lloyd George could have been killed by poisoned arrows or darts. He claimed a verdict of acquittal.

  The jury took just 30 minutes to return verdicts of Guilty against Alice Wheeldon, Alfred Mason and Winnie Mason, who received terms of imprisonment of ten, seven and five years respectively. Harriet Wheeldon was acquitted. In passing sentence, the judge observed that he could not think of a worse case, and that Alice Wheeldon had been convicted on evidence which could only have brought the jury to one conclusion. Turning to Alfred Mason, Mr Justice Low declared that but for the recommendation to mercy from the jury, he too would have received ten years’ penal servitude. Of Winnie Mason he said that he took her upbringing into account, and that her position was due largely to the ‘bad and wicked’ influence of her mother. The coarse language habitually and admittedly used by all three women greatly irritated the judge, who, in noting that Harriet and Winnie were teachers, informed the jury he wondered whether elementary education was such a blessing after all.

  After sentence had been passed, Sylvia Pankhurst was allowed to enter the witness box to deny that the Suffragette movement had ever spent £300 on a plot to murder the Prime Minister. Alice Wheeldon and the Masons each served two years in gaol before being released after a Home Office review, conducted at the express request of Lloyd George. In recent years commentators have observed that the defendants were convicted on doubtful evidence, although it should be borne in mind that traffic in lethal poisons was admitted, only the purpose being disputed. Alice Wheeldon’s fanatical zeal for gesture politics had certainly run too far to avoid prosecution. Weakened by a meagre prison diet, hard labour and a succession of hunger strikes, she succumbed to influenza shortly after her release from custody in 1919. However, her legend lives on in the realm of fiction, informing both a play by Sheila Rowbotham (The Friends of Alice Wheeldon), and in The Eye in the Door (1993), the second volume of the acclaimed Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker.

  If aspects of the Wheeldon trial bordered on the ludicrous, it paled when compared to another case heard at the Central Criminal Court a year later, in June 1918. The nature of the action was unusual enough: the private prosecution of an MP by a dancer for criminal libel, following the staging of a banned play by Oscar Wilde. But it was the allegations which formed the background to the case that truly set it apart: that the Hidden Hand was seeking to undermine the British fighting spirit by propagating vices which ‘all decent men thought had perished in Sodom and Lesbia’, and to render the British army ineffective by the deliberate spread of venereal disease.

  The background to this inglorious yet celebrated legal episode requires no little elaboration. In 1918 Noel Pemberton-Billing, the Independent MP for East Hertfordshire, had held his seat for two years and gained a reputation as a prominent demagogue. Billing, or ‘PB’ as he preferred to be known, was a man of many talents. A former repertory actor and singer, Billing was also an incorrigible inventor whose unlikely creations ranged from a pencil which calculated ‘as you write’ to a machine for making and packing self-lighting cigarettes, as well as the ‘Digit Typewriter’ and the ‘Proxy Phone’. Billing also tried his hand at magazine publishing, farming, property development and a career at the Bar, all without conspicuous success.

  In 1912 PB took a crash course in flying, obtained a pilot’s licence, and founded the Supermarine Aircraft Company at Southampton, later to produce the Spitfire. Success was slow in coming for the company, however, and after war broke out PB decided to pursue a parliamentary career. Rejected by the Conservatives as a maverick, Billing stood as an Independent in the Mile End by-election, his stated aim being a ‘strong air policy’. After losing to a Coalition candidate, and vexed by the lack of official interest in the designs generated by Supermarine, Billing enlisted in the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). His service career is somewhat mysterious: he was said to have taken a prominent role in the planning of the first bombing raid on Germany in November 1914, which targeted the large Zeppelin base at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, and to have risen to the rank of Squadron Commander. Later, official sources would claim that Billing had spent only 12 months in the RNAS, had never flown on a raid or in the face of the enemy, and never rose beyond Flight Lieutenant. Whatever the truth, in March 1916 Billing fought and won the East Hertfordshire by-election, again as an Independent candidate, and with rude enthusiasm set about fulfilling what he described in his autobiography (published a year later) as ‘the self-appointed task’.

  By virtue of persistent questions in the Commons on air policy, Billing became known as the ‘Member for Air’, an ironic sobriquet which acknowledged his verbal profligacy, be it on the subject of spies, aliens or any other mild or serious cause for complaint. Billing vigorously promoted his self-image of a man of action, drove a lemon-yellow Rolls Royce, dressed in unusual clothes, and expressed a preference for ‘fast aircraft, fast speed-boats, fast cars and fast women’ – and kept quiet the fact that his wife, Lilian Schweitzer, was half-German. To further his cause for a greater degree of ‘purity’ in public life, and to root out the ‘mysterious influence’ of the Hidden Hand, Billing founded a small-circulation subscription-only journal called The Imperialist, which he initially ran at a loss from his Hertford base, and which carried inflam
matory articles intended to provoke libel writs, and thus self-serving publicity. For this reason no advertising revenue was forthcoming for the magazine, although a measure of financial backing was provided by Lord Beaverbrook. In June 1917 Billing also founded the Vigilante Society, and proved himself to be a combative character in a more literal sense. A month afterwards, a slighting reference to army officers made in the Commons triggered a confrontation with Colonel Archer-Slee, which ended that evening in the two men exchanging punches on the grass in New Palace Yard. Escapades of this kind failed to impress his political superiors, who regarded Billing as a loose cannon. Indeed, in the opinion of David Lloyd George: ‘This man is dangerous. He doesn’t want anything.’

  Although Billing and his self-appointed task appeared patriotic to a fault, his vision was clouded by something far darker. Many of the political radicals from whom he drew inspiration, and who were employed or published by his magazine, were engaged in developing what is identified by author Philip Hoare as a virulent strain of British fascism. Henry Beamish, who ran the Vigilante Finance Committee, was a hardened anti-semite who preached that the German jews, or Ashkenazim, had infiltrated British society at all levels. Dr J.H. Clarke, another founding Vigilante, was chief consulting physician at the Bloomsbury Homeopathic Hospital; his self-proclaimed mission was to protect England from the Church of Rome. No less unpleasant was Arnold White, an elderly editor of the English Review whose ideas embraced the forced Jewish colonisation of Argentina, and whose books included The Modern Jew, Efficiency and Empire, Is the Kaiser Insane? and The Hidden Hand. The latter, published in September 1917, was particularly popular, its lurid black cover and shocking red lettering offering a stern warning to all right-thinking Britons. On the subject of pervasive treachery, White wrote: