Pearls before Poppies

by Rachel Trethewey

  Although Northcliffe’s newspapers had influence, they did not have the power to change the law, only Parliament could do that. While the debate was taking place in The Times, an equally heated one was happening in Westminster. In the Lords, Lord Lansdowne emphasised the growing needs of the Red Cross. In the first year of the war their expenditure was £1 million; it was now considerably more than £4 million. More than £10,000 each day was needed. They spent £25,000 a week on medical, general and other stores destined for the theatres of war and £40,000 a week on comforts and different items that they sent to prisoners of war. He argued that this Bill would enable them to get money that they could not get in any other way.

  The escalating argument split the Establishment. The Archbishop of Canterbury led the opposition in the Lords. He argued that the issue was of far-reaching importance and it was ‘not really a little Bill’ it had been described as, because a great principle was involved. If it was passed it would ‘be opening the floodgates’ to the growth of gambling. The archbishop added that a friend of his had come to him and asked whether it was really possible that those who had given pearls, as he had done in memory of someone who had lost his life, had given something which was going to be used for a purpose which the givers would deprecate. Although he would be pleased to see the Red Cross increase its income, he would not want to do it in a way which would ‘compromise principles which I regard as of vital importance to our national life’.20

  To the Red Cross Committee’s relief, the Bill passed its second reading in the Lords, although the final hurdle would be to get it through the House of Commons. Drawing on skills honed over decades, the Northcliffes and Sir Robert Hudson were manipulating the situation behind the scenes. The Northcliffe press was used to applying persuasive pressure on politicians. As a former chief agent of the Liberal Party, Sir Robert also had many political contacts and was skilled in political manoeuvring. He wrote to Lord Northcliffe that the only way to get the Bill through the House of Commons was if it was given government backing and the home secretary, Sir George Cave, supported it.

  However, the Northcliffe press had recently launched a populist campaign against Cave that might jeopardise his support. Northcliffe and many people in the country believed that Cave was not being tough enough on enemy aliens; they wanted immediate internment of all aliens of enemy blood. Stirring up a frenzy of anti-German and anti-Cave feeling by running a series of scare stories about enemy aliens, Northcliffe had driven Cave almost to the point of resignation. It was at this moment that Sir Robert reminded his co-conspirator:

  He [Cave] knows that it is a Bill to enable us to raffle those pearls. He knows your Lady collected the pearls. At present he is benevolent in the extreme. I want to keep him so. A couple of million pounds depends on his good will. By the time you see what is coming, and are probably saying ‘Damn his impudence’, but nothing venture, nothing get. Couldn’t certain papers give George Cave a rest for a fortnight?21

  Northcliffe agreed to ‘mark time for a bit’, although he said that it would not be easy because there was a ‘Niagara of public opinion’ about enemy aliens.22

  The plotting worked, and on 30 July Sir Robert Hudson wrote to Lord Northcliffe, ‘I think I have today landed Cave with the entire charge of the Bill as a Government measure in the House of Commons.’23

  In fact, the triumvirate only got part of what they wanted, the Bill did not get official government backing at this stage and instead had to rely on a free vote. However, the home secretary agreed to introduce the motion and it was promised that if it was carried it would be treated as a government measure in its remaining stages. On 1 August, Lord Northcliffe wrote to Sir Robert, ‘Cave says that he has caved in, and it may not be necessary to prod him anymore, and I will remain quiet so long as he is good.’24 Most importantly, the Bill was given the necessary parliamentary time before the summer recess. On 8 August, Parliament was adjourning for ten weeks so it was essential that the change in the law came quickly, in time for the Red Cross Pearl Appeal to benefit.

  In the middle of the Bill’s passage through Parliament, Lady Northcliffe wrote an effusive thank-you letter to Lloyd George rejoicing that it had passed the second reading in the House of Lords safely, but expressing anxiety about what would happen once it reached the House of Commons. She told Lloyd George that they would need all his help and support and she knew that she could count on it. Outside Parliament, her team were doing all that they could but they depended on the prime minister’s sympathetic interest and practical help to achieve the result they required. With her customary charm, she finished by telling Lloyd George how grateful he had made her.25

  This letter reflected the complex relationship between Lord Northcliffe and Lloyd George. The press baron had supported the Welsh politician for prime minister when Asquith was in power. However, there was an ambivalence in their feelings for each other. Once Lloyd George was prime minister, he was determined that his old supporter should not pull the strings. Lloyd George’s mistress and private secretary, Frances Stevenson, was very critical of Northcliffe and did not want her lover to have too much to do with him. When there were rumours that Northcliffe might be made minister of air in 1916, she commented that if Northcliffe once got a position in government he would not rest until he was made dictator.26 In April 1917 she recorded in her diary that the newspaper proprietor had been to see the prime minister and told him that his government was even more unpopular than the last one. Lloyd George put this comment down to the fact that he was doing things without consulting Northcliffe, which irritated the great man.27

  Although Lloyd George’s relationship with Lady Northcliffe’s husband was becoming increasingly strained, it seems that the prime minister helped her on this occasion. However, the decision to give the Bill parliamentary time so late in the session caused controversy. When some MPs who opposed gambling heard what was happening just one or two days before the debate, they claimed that the government had taken them by surprise. They suggested that proponents of the Bill had an unfair advantage because they had known what was happening in advance. They complained that many members had already gone on holiday not knowing that the measure was being brought forward. Andrew Bonar Law, on behalf of the government, denied these suggestions but it created a bad feeling between the two sides in the run-up to the debate.

  The atmosphere was tense on 6 August when Sir George Cave moved the second reading of the Bill in a late-night sitting attended by only a few MPs. He explained that the Home Office considered the present position was ‘intolerable’, as to enforce the law against raffles and tombolas for war purposes would run counter to the feeling of the great mass of the population. He added, ‘Either the law must be enforced or it must be altered.’28

  Passionate opposition was then expressed by anti-gambling MPs who were motivated by their religious or political principles. Theodore Taylor, a Lancashire woollen manufacturer, in moving the rejection of the motion, said he hoped he would not be seen as a ‘kill-joy’ or ‘a skinny and disagreeable Puritan’, but he accused Sir George Cave of putting ‘a nasty thing in the nicest way’.29 He then made a convoluted argument drawing parallels between Marie Antoinette’s diamond necklace and the Red Cross Pearls, arguing that just as the diamond necklace had something to do with the French Revolution so the pearl necklace threatened the development of a revolutionary spirit in this country. How could Parliament permit titled ladies to gamble for the necklace and then send poor men to prison for other forms of gambling like playing pitch and toss?

  At the heart of the debate was whether the ends justified the means. Was it worth risking an increase in gambling to boost funds for the Red Cross? Sir John Spear appealed to the House not to resort to illegal practices even to raise money for war purposes. While some Labour members raised valid concerns about the dangers of encouraging their working-class constituents to gamble, when every penny of their income was needed to feed and clothe their children, other opponents resorted to the
same snobbish arguments as the bishops. Sir Stephen Collins asked, ‘What is a workman’s wife to do with that [the pearl necklace]? Put it round her neck?’ He even criticised the donors of the jewels, commenting, ‘If it had not been for the pearls we should have heard nothing of this lottery. If the good people who gave the pearls had only given money we should have heard nothing of this proposal.’30 Continuing in a similar vein, Sidney Robinson claimed that the majority of people who bought tickets would be doing it to gamble rather than for the good of the cause. He asked, ‘What good will a pearl necklace of great value be to a miner or a munition worker? Their wives would be anxious not to get the pearl necklace as such, but to convert it into cash. It is pure gambling, and it is nothing else.’31

  Supporting a change in the law, Evelyn Cecil, who was a member of the Joint War Committee of the Order of St John and the British Red Cross, asked members what other more effective form of fundraising they could offer. He reminded them that voluntary, though illegal, efforts of this kind had been going on for some time in county bazaars and raffles held on behalf of the Red Cross. With heavy sarcasm, he commented, ‘Estimable ladies have put their backs into it and done their utmost. I suppose they are all liable to be arrested and tried or imprisoned.’32 The Chairman of the British Red Cross, Sir Arthur Stanley, who was actively involved in the Pearl Appeal, suggested that some of the previous speakers misunderstood the whole spirit of the enterprise and their words amounted to ‘almost a sneer at the noble ladies giving these pearls’. He added:

  I would point out that many of these ladies are very far from rich. They gave that which to each of them was most precious, and they gave it in order to help what they felt was even more precious. They felt that they were giving these pearls for the relief of suffering, which they themselves would willingly have laid down their lives to avoid.

  Members were wrong to try to put a monetary value on the pearls because they were ‘above all price’. Great trust had been placed in the Pearl Committee and it was their duty to find the best way to raise funds to help the suffering. Countering the more snobbish arguments of his opponents, he added, ‘I own myself I should think that that necklace had been more properly and more worthily bought by the poor man who managed to pay the shilling [to a raffle] than by anyone who could afford to buy it.’ He closed his speech by asking the members to let the Red Cross have ‘a perfectly innocent incentive’ for a generous public.33

  When the free vote was taken late that night, to everyone’s surprise, the Bill fell at the final hurdle. It was rejected by eighty-one votes to seventy-seven, a majority of just four. An unusual alliance of Establishment bishops, Nonconformist Liberals and anti-gambling members of the Labour Party had rebelled against the measure. ‘Eve’ in Tatler used humour to attack the antis, writing that they ‘did us out, tiresome things, of the very toppingest topper-most gamble I’ve come across for years’.34 However, other newspapers wrote more seriously about the implications. The defeat of the Bill caused widespread anger and a questioning of how well British democracy was actually working. The Red Cross’ journal wrote sarcastically that two Members of Parliament, Mr Taylor who ‘somehow’ linked Marie Antoinette’s necklace with revolution in this country, and Sir John Spear who declared that the House of Commons would be ‘breaking the law’ by altering the law, ‘have something to learn in political history and constitutional law’.35 The Times claimed that the effects of this decision were ‘not pleasant to contemplate’. Parliament had gone against public opinion and the law would be hard to enforce. The police would now be expected to take action against all raffles, while other forms of gambling like betting on horseracing ‘goes merrily on’. Not just the funds of the Red Cross would suffer, so would the work of the YMCA, St Dunstan’s charity for the blind and other notable war charities. Stirring up its readers’ emotions further, the article concluded, ‘The sick and wounded men of our race will bear in their shattered bodies the marks of this example of the wisdom of the House of Commons.’36

  Parliament’s decision was a devastating blow to the Red Cross Pearl Appeal. They now had to find an alternative plan. The most unusual suggestion appeared in a letter to The Spectator. The author wrote:

  Hundreds of pounds have been raised by exhibiting the pearls here. Could they not be sent round the world for exhibition until the war is over or a sufficient harvest has been reaped. Then let them be given to the countries Germany has outraged, to be worn by the wives of their rulers on State occasions in memory of those who died for them and us – notably on that great Thanks-giving Day which shall see their deliverance from Germany.37

  A decision on the fate of the pearls needed to be made without further delay. If the pearls were to maintain their fundraising momentum they needed to be turned into money for the Red Cross within a few months. Eventually it was decided that an auction of the pearls should be held at Christie’s on 19 December. It was estimated that between £100,000 and £200,000 would be raised by the pearls at auction, compared to between £1 million and £2 million if they had been raffled.

  Despite the major setback in Parliament, Lady Northcliffe and her committee were not downhearted for long as the response from the public continued to amaze them. As the Daily Mail explained, the veto of ‘bigots’ in the House of Commons proved the best advertisement possible, and by arousing resentment and ‘the fair and sporting spirit of the British public’, even more gems came in.38

  In the early autumn, many donations arrived from abroad. In Egypt, Lady Wingate’s appeal collected 123 pearls and £3,500 in money. The wife of the high commissioner, Lady Wingate collected valuable gifts from many different nationalities and provinces. The pearls came from the sultan’s family, local businesses and individuals. In South America, over 100 donors gave pearls through the British Ladies’ Patriotic Committee in Montevideo. In Chile, gems including 100 small pearls from the ladies of Santiago were received by the wife of Britain’s envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, Lady Stronge. Jewels were also sent from Singapore and India. Like the soldiers who had come from across the British Empire to fight for the motherland, the pearl necklace campaign reflected the patriotic spirit which reached far beyond Britain’s borders.

  Twelve

  THE KITCHENER RUBIES

  No figure represented the ideals of Empire more than the secretary of state for war, Lord Kitchener. The conqueror of the Sudan and victor of Omdurman was a hero who, despite military setbacks, remained one of the most popular figures of the war. He embodied the patriotic spirit of the early years of the conflict. On 5 August 1914, Asquith appointed the military hero to be secretary of state for war with a seat in the Cabinet.

  His first task had been to raise an army and make sure that raw recruits were effectively trained. An imposing figure at 6ft 2in tall, broad-shouldered and upright, his distinctive features, with the immaculate moustache and the slight cast in his right eye, became the face of the recruiting campaign. On posters across the country his finger pointed at young men as he told them, ‘Your country needs you!’

  In the final weeks of the Pearl Appeal, when it was decided that every necklace should have a clasp to hold the pearls together, a donor known only by their initials ‘MFP’ gave five rubies in memory of this national icon.

  The jewels were from Lord Kitchener’s sister, Frances Parker, who was known as Millie. She sent it with the message, ‘Lest we forget. In Memory of Kitchener of Khartoum, June 5, 1916.’ On that fateful day, Lord Kitchener had set sail from Scapa Flow to the Russian port of Archangel aboard the armoured cruiser HMS Hampshire. His mission was to advise the Russians on military matters. A storm was raging but, impatient to get on with his task, Kitchener refused to wait until the gale died down. He was relaxing in his cabin when at about 7.45 p.m. there was an explosion. The ship had struck a mine that had been laid by a German submarine west of the Orkney Islands. The Hampshire lurched to starboard, the electricity failed and all the lights went out. Water gushed in through the enor
mous hole in her side and the ship began to sink. Hearing the commotion, Kitchener came onto the quarter-deck, showing no outward sign of nervousness. When the captain asked him to get into a lifeboat, he either did not hear or decided it would be useless.1 In the violent storm there was little chance of survival; Kitchener, his staff and 643 of the 655 crew drowned or died of exposure.2 Only twelve men reached the rocky shores of the Orkneys.

  The sinking of the Hampshire was one of the most memorable moments of the war. Like the death of President Kennedy decades later, everyone remembered where they were when they heard the news. Margot Asquith rushed into a family christening at St Paul’s Cathedral just bursting to tell everyone, she then insisted on talking loudly about it all through the ceremony.3 Many ordinary people felt a personal sense of loss. Vera Brittain described how nearly everyone in England stopped what they were doing to stare into the incredulous eyes of their neighbour. Sad and subdued, she walked with her mother and brother beside the Thames at Westminster. Kitchener had such a powerful hold on their imagination that it felt as if the ship of state had sunk that night.4 The king wrote to Millie Parker, ‘While the whole nation mourns the death of a great soldier, I have personally lost in Lord Kitchener an old and valued friend, upon whose devotion I ever relied with the utmost confidence.’5 Not since the death of Queen Victoria had there been such an outpouring of public grief. Stores closed, blinds were drawn and flags were flown at half mast.6