Gallipoli 6: Neutral Till It Suits

The entry of Goeben and Breslau to the Dardanelles, barely a week into Britain’s war with Germany, was a significant achievement. It felt like a defeat; it was anything but.

The Royal Navy suffered a widely felt embarrassment at the incapacity of its Mediterranean fleet to destroy two relatively easy targets. In the eyes of fellow senior officers, the failure to engage the enemy was seen as a shameful episode, contrary to the finest traditions of the navy. The commanders of the British cruiser squadrons, Rear-Admiral Milne and Vice-Admiral Troubridge, were recalled to London in response to widespread public criticism. These senior officers had to be held to account to placate the Russians who might have asked even more awkward questions about the Goeben’s escape. They protested that they did no wrong. Milne insisted that he had given ‘unquestioning obedience’ to Admiralty orders and was able to demonstrate that in his pursuit of the Goeben, he had carried them out to the letter. [1] He stated that he had successfully prevented the Germans from carrying out their primary aim to attack French troops crossing from Africa, and was publicly vindicated. Milne did obey orders, but it is unlikely that we shall ever know what his true orders were.

Vice-Admiral Troubridge was subjected to a Court of Inquiry which considered that his failure to engage the Goeben, after she left Messina on 6 August, was deplorable. [2] He was then tried by Court Martial on a charge of negligence for failing to pursue the Goeben under section three of the Naval Discipline Act, [3] but his conduct was vindicated. [4] It was political posturing. The Admiralty went through the motions of a strictly private court martial whose proceedings were barred to the press. The Rear Admiral had followed orders from London, but had not been party to all the information available. [5] It must be remembered that the Admiralty knew precisely where the Goeben was headed, but did not share this with Troubridge. Such information could not have been made public for the damage it would have caused to British-Russian relations would have been terminal. Milne and Troubridge had to carry the can for the entire episode and neither commanded at sea again.

No-one at the time considered that the Goeben and Breslau’s escape to Constantinople had been carefully orchestrated by the Foreign Office in London in conjunction with the Admiralty, to stop Russia seizing the city, [6] but that was certainly the immediate effect. It also demonstrated the over-reaching power exercised by Enver Pasha in granting permission to the German warships to make their spectacular entry into the Bosphorus without consulting either the Grand Vizier or any other member of the Turkish government. Anchored in the Golden Horn, the cruisers were never asylum seekers. They were game-changing defenders of the Ottoman Empire, though they posed an awkward question in terms of international law. Since Turkey was still a neutral country ( her secret agreement with Germany of 2 August did not commit her to war ) why did she provide a safe haven for the German warships? As has already been noted [7] Enver Pasha, acting on his own initiative, had asked the German Ambassador to send both cruisers through the Dardanelles to replace the dreadnoughts which Britain had so deviously commandeered. [8] In order to maintain Ottoman neutrality, Goeben and Breslau were hastily incorporated into the Sultan’s navy. [9]

The famous names of Goeben and Breslau were replaced by Sultan Jawuz Selim, and Midilli. The German crews exchanged their floppy dark-blue sailors’ caps for red fezzes, and raised the Turkish flag, but nothing else changed. They were German ships, controlled by a German Admiral and crewed by German sailors who took their orders from Berlin. Churchill was apoplectic in public since it reflected so badly on the Royal Navy and the British fleet received orders to proceed immediately to blockade the entrance to the Dardanelles. [10] According to Herbert Asquith, Churchill wanted to send a torpedo flotilla through the Dardanelles ‘to sink the Goeben and her consort’, [11] but it was all posturing. Britain asked that the German crews be removed, but ‘were reluctant to pressure the Turks to send the German vessels away.’ [12] Reluctant? Indeed, they were more than reluctant. Having gone to extraordinary lengths to shepherd them into the pen, Churchill and the Foreign Office had no intention of driving them out.

Their safe arrival rendered a Russian amphibious operation to seize Constantinople well-nigh impossible. [13] Although Sazonov protested furiously, London attempted to rationalise the situation. It was better, they suggested, to have the warships in the Sea of Marmara as part of the Turkish navy than in the Mediterranean as German combatants. Russia had been kept out of Constantinople, but the Secret Elite now faced the considerable problem of keeping her focused on the eastern front. How enthusiastic would they be to continue the war if they were not to gain the great prize of Constantinople? It required a delicate balance of assurances and timing, and in this the elites were magnificently served by a most trusted agent, Sir Louis Mallet, Ambassador at Constantinople. Mallet’s critical role at the start of the war was to keep Turkey neutral until it suited Britain to shunt her into the war on Germany’s side.

Described by the Turkish Minister, Djamal Pasha, as ‘a particularly fine man, thoroughly honest and very kind’, [14] Mallet’s appointment in 1913 raised eyebrows in diplomatic circles. He had been head of the Eastern Department in the Foreign Office since 1907, not a court diplomat, and trusted completely by Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey and Sir Arthur Nicolson, his permanent secretary. Mallet was close to the inner circle of the Secret Elite and had worked for years on the development of British policies in Egypt, Persia, and India. He understood the geopolitics of the Middle East, and was totally conversant with British interests and long term aims in the region. Mallet was sent to Constantinople as the embodiment of British sympathy for the Young Turks who considered his appointment an act of friendship. His role was to keep the Porte ( the name for the Ottoman administration ) neutral in order to buy time for the British Empire in the troubled early months of the war. Mallet was well able to match the Ottomans at their own game of flawless duplicity.

Louis Mallet absented himself from Turkey in the summer of 1914, and was ‘on leave’ when Enver Pasha signed the secret alliance with Germany on 2 August. It is hard to imagine that during these days of unprecedented international crisis, Mallet was simply on vacation. At the moment when the Foreign Office and the Admiralty were deciding on the fate of the Turkish dreadnoughts, when Sazonov and the Russians were ranting about the need to keep these massive warships from the Turks, when the Goeben and Breslau were making good their escape, it beggar’s belief that the British Ambassador was not deeply involved, giving advice and making recommendations. For six years he had served Sir Edward Grey as Under-Secretary of State in charge of Near and Middle Eastern affairs. Mallet was one of the most knowledgeable men in the country in matters concerning the Ottoman Empire, yet we are asked to accept that unfortunately he was on leave and could not be disturbed. It gave the Secret Elite the perfect excuse to distance him from all that had happened. He was on holiday, hence out of the firing line, when the Turkish warships were seized by Churchill. Thus his close relationship with the Young Turks was untainted by the hostility which was associated with Britain’s action. How very fortunate.

In fact Mallet became the main instrument in the charm offensive devised to soothe the anxious Turks and keep them neutral until Britain was ready and the time was right. He returned to Constantinople on 16 August with promises to make good the financial loss incurred by the commandeering of the dreadnoughts, and pursued a determined line that Ottoman neutrality was in the best interests of everyone. Asquith noted his satisfaction on 19 August, ‘ Happily, Louis Mallet is back in Constantinople,’ and relationships ‘will be further improved if we offer to return their two seized battleships at the end of the war.’ [15] The Foreign Office’s only stipulation was that the German crews had to be sent home, a condition they knew could never be met. Note what was specifically implied here. Britain was not asking Turkey to surrender the warships, or promise not to use them. Keep the warships; defend Constantinople, but remove the Germans. It was as well that Asquith’s letters did not reach Sazonov.

Mallet and the British Foreign Office knew about the ‘secret’ Turkish alliance with Germany long before his return to Constantinople. The British Ambassador was fully aware that Enver Pasha was the principal decision-maker inside the Turkish Cabinet and Mallet could literally watch the Goeben and Breslau from his residence at Therapia as they sailed past every other day, their guns ready for action. [16] He knew exactly what was going on behind the scenes but pretended ignorance. Neither Mallet nor the Foreign Office were fooled by soft words or vague promises, but they played the game of duplicity in order to buy valuable time and keep Turkey neutral for as long as possible.

There were two imperatives. The first was to keep Russia in the war. The second was to keep the Muslim world on-side; to prepare India and Arabia for the certainty that if war broke out with Turkey, the Holy Places would be protected. Since 1517 the Ottoman Sultan had been recognised as a Caliph, the religious and political successor to the Prophet Muhammad. The Ottoman Caliph was held to be the leader of the worldwide Muslim community and defender of the holy cities of Medina and Mecca. Moslems might forgive Britain for going to war against the only significant independent Islamic power, but not the disruption of pilgrimages to the Holy Places of Arabia [17]

In those early days of the Secret Elite’s war, the Foreign Office and the War Office had to ensure that everything was in place to deal with any religious uprisings when the Ottomans entered the war. Kitchener and prime minister Asquith agreed that, ‘…in the interests of the Moslems in India and Egypt’, Britain must not do anything which could be interpreted as taking the initiative in a war against the Ottomans. She ought to ‘be compelled to strike the first blow…’ [18] Two weeks earlier they had ‘compelled’ Germany ‘to strike the first blow,’ then heaped the blame on her for starting the war. It was the mantra repeated so often before Britain went to war. Sir Edward Grey later reminded Ambassador Mallet that ‘I do not see how war can be avoided, but we shall not take the first step.’ [19]. That said it all. Perfidious Albion dressed herself in apparent innocence before ‘being compelled’ to go to war. It was an oft repeated hypocrisy. [20]

[1] Arthur J Marder, From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow Vol. II, p.32.
[2] PRO/National Archives, ADM/156/76
[3] Ibid.
[4] The Times, 13 Nov, 1914, p. 5.
[5] Marder, From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, vol II, pp. 32-39.
[6] WW Gottlieb, Studies in Secret Diplomacy during the First World War pp. 47ff and passim.
[7] See Blog Gallipoli 3
[8] Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War. p. 106.
[9] Ulrich Trumpener, The Escape of the Goeben and Breslau, Canadian Journal of History, September 1971,Canadian Journal of History) p. 171.
[10] Martin Gilbert, Winston S Churchill, vol III, p. 194.
[11] Michael and Eleanor Brock, HH Asquith, Letters,to Venetia Stanley, p. 171.
[12] McMeekin, The Russian Origins, pp. 99-100.
[13] Ibid., pp. 105-106.
[14] Djamal Pasha, Memories of a Turkish Statesman. http://archive.org/details/ memoriesofturkis00ahmeuoft
[15] Brock, HH Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 179.
[16] Joseph Heller, Sir Louis Mallet and the Ottoman Empire, The Road to War, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.12, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), p. 36.
[17] David Fromkin, A Peace to end all Peace, p. 101.
[18] Brock, HH Asquith, Letters, p. 171.
[19] Joseph Heller, Sir Louis Mallet and the Ottoman Empire, The Road to War, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.12, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), p. 36.
[20] For example, when Sir Alfred Milner decided that war with the Boers was unavoidable he deliberately ‘bounced’ Kruger into making the first move. (Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 40.)

A Seasonal Blog: The Christmas Truth, 1914

Readers who do not live in the UK might want to look at the supermarket-chain Sainsbury’s Christmas advert before reading this blog. It can be viewed on Youtube  https://www.youtube.com/user/Sainsburys

The current Sainsbury’s Christmas advert offers the perfect example of a commercial rewriting of history to present beautifully crafted film as if it was historical truth. Done in the best of taste, with the blessing of the Royal British Legion, Sainsbury’s message is about gift giving in the expectation of an increased market share for the company. It is sentimental and sugary-sweet. The trenches are deep and crisp and even seem to have nicely spaced-out lamps. Handsome soldiers with perfect teeth smile through comfortable clean clothes and heavy overcoats as they gingerly extend their hands in friendship towards the enemy. There is an overwhelming sense of humanity and a hint that the ordinary soldier saw no point in the carnage that had already been raging for four bloody months. No evil in sight; it is Disney World history.

As both sides settled into the stalemate of that first winter campaign, soldiers faced long, wet, dark days with daily artillery fire to deepen depression. Honour and glory were stuck in the oozing mud, and legs rotted into black with false frostbite ‘until many of them were carried away with bronchitis and pneumonia’. These very decent men from good clean homes struggled relentlessly against the lice and vermin that invaded their privacy. New enemies with strange names like cerebo-spinal meningitis sent shudders down the line, and a sense of hopelessness replaced the early expectation of a quick victory. [1] Pity then, that the Sainsbury’s version is so clean-cut and sterilised with no sense of hardship and squalor.

Little wonder that a spirit of goodwill descended over the trenches with the Christmas mists in Flanders as a truce of sorts broke out along sections of the front line not far from Ypres. (Tour guides take visitors to impromptu road-side memorials every day) In some parts it lasted for more than twenty-four hours; not so in others. The cease-fire was not continuously observed, but despite the fact that any man who first put his head above the parapet was taking a risk, groups of officers and men from both sides cautiously stepped out of their trenches and met an enemy with whom they shared common ground.

Letters sent from the front and published in the Times around New Year, recorded the amazement of British officers, men from the Royal Field Artillery, the Leicestershire Regiment, the London Rifle Brigade, as well as Scottish, Irish and Welsh regiments, that this spirit of cautious trust, blossomed, albeit briefly, into a temporary peace. A Major in the Leicesters found the Germans ‘jolly cheery fellows for the most part, and it seems so silly under these circumstances to be fighting them.’ [2] Men were later imprisoned for such treacherous sentiments. An officer from the Rifle Brigade was astounded to find the German trenches on Christmas Eve bedecked with lanterns looking like ‘The Thames on Henley Regatta Night,’ and thought that three quarters of the German army were ‘very young youths’.

An Army Medical Corps Major wrote of the ‘sing-songs’ which ended with both sides rendering ‘God Save The King’, and a football match which ‘the Saxons’ (Germans) won 2-1. Clearly, both sides enjoyed the universal appeal of football under impossible conditions. ‘We had an inter-platoon game of football in the afternoon, a cap-comforter stuffed with straw for the ball, much to the Saxons’ amusement.’ [3] The Sainsbury’s advert caught that part of the story well. At least four football ‘matches’ were reportedly played between British and German troops, and the Glasgow News reported a 4-1 victory for the Argylls.[4] But look at the vocabulary. These Germans weren’t ‘Huns’, they were ‘Saxons’, men who had similar historical family roots, including of course, the King and the Kaiser.

The satyrical magic of Joan Littlewood’s magnificent Oh! What A Lovely War, was best caught towards the end of the football game when the ‘match’ was interrupted by the sound of heavy guns symbolising an end to the truce. The awkwardness was broken by a small Scotsman who rasped, “That’s the bloody English”, with an inferred responsibility which was definitely unfair. But this truth is clear. British Military Headquarters issued orders forbidding any ‘truce’ with the enemy. What happened was illegal and dangerous in the minds of the warmongers. This is the second major failure in Sainsbury’s advert. It fails to capture any sense of disobedience, of a solidarity between men from both sides which defied clearly expressed orders.

The British Military Commanders, and those who operated above them, gave strict instructions that there would not be ‘anything of the nature of a truce’. All ranks were reminded that ‘war is war, and the Germans invariably have some sinister motives in all they do, especially under the guise of a gush of friendly sentiment.’ This order was issued on 21 December from British Headquarters and reported abroad by Reuters. The Generals could see the danger. If men laid down their weapons all along the western front, the war would collapse. Had it grown to a mutiny, governments would have fallen. Profits would have plummeted. That was the backdrop on which Sainsbury’s had no wish to focus attention.

Philip Gibbs, the war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Chronicle, was renowned as a journalist who told it as it was. He recorded the full horror of the first world war and faced the wrath of arrogant Generals who arrested him four times and attempted repeatedly to censor his reports. He fought his own battle against the military brass whom he famously described as having ‘the brains of canaries and the manners of Potsdam.’ Gibbs saw that British soldiers held no great bitterness against the Germans, trapped like themselves in trenches barely a hundred yards away; an enemy that was enduring the same misery during that winter of 1914. In his wonderfully observed record, The War Dispatches, Gibbs wrote warmly about the sense of comradeship amongst men who did not want to kill each other but lived under the spell of ‘high distant Powers who had agreed this warfare’. They were caught in someone else’s war, sacrificed like gladiators in the Roman amphitheatres who had to kill or be killed by their owners. They were all victims; all expendable. At that moment in time these British and German men, standing together in the mists of Flanders, took photographs, arm in arm, exchanged cigarettes, sang …and cursed the war.

The Times of 23 December 1914 painted a thoroughly positive, nearly joyous, account of Christmas plans at the front. How the men who stayed at home must have cursed their luck that they were not in Flanders. Army units were reported to be making their own arrangements on a very extensive scale. One corps was said to have ordered 700 chickens from Paris and proposed to serve every man with half a chicken ‘ hot from the field kitchens’. What luxury.

‘The authorities’ were reported to have arranged for sufficient plum puddings for every man to have half a pudding to himself. Whether everyone was so fortunate, we do not know, but one letter home did mention ‘tinned plumb pudding sent from Uncle Jed’. According to The Times, supplies from home of these seasonal luxuries were so colossal that workers in the Field Post Office were buried chin-deep in parcels. [5] Such propaganda was, of course, for home consumption, but we are left with the nagging feeling that Sainsbury’s may well have missed a trick in not promoting sales of chicken and plum pudding.

And what of the Germans? At this early stage of the war the ‘Boches’ were depicted by the British propaganda machine as spiteful, vindictive and mean. The Times dismissed stories about German difficulties in providing sufficient Christmas rations for their soldiers, but boasted that ‘it is quite safe to say that they will fare very much more frugally than our own men.’ The report warned that British soldiers should take great care because the Germans would want to spoil ‘ the other fellow’s enjoyment’ by strafing the trenches. Such behaviour, they described as ‘a good sound, Hunnish axiom’.  To the ranks of the elite the enemy were ‘Huns’; in the  ranks of ordinary men, they were ‘Saxons’. An interesting divide indeed.

What the middle-classes read in the comfort of their warm coal-fired homes was as far from reality as possible. The lads were to be served hot christmas fare including half a chicken and plum pudding. Really? The stale biscuit which Sainsbury’s went to commendable lengths to reproduce for their advert, was the more likely fare for the ordinary soldier, though in that first Christmas of the war there was more to go round.  The Christmas message from the Anglican pulpits of christian justification struggled to marry the concept of peace and the raging war. Hensley Henson, the Dean of Durham preached proudly that ‘the battlefield became radiant with moral witness when its carnage was transfigured by unselfish devotion and its anguish was mitigated by ministries of love’ [6] Such meaningless nonsense may have sounded fine in the hallowed halls of Durham, but it bore no semblance to the reality of the trenches.

In all the nonsense of this propaganda, the final line in The Times article of 23rd December stung like the bitter poison of a profound lie. According to their report, the order to avoid fraternising with the enemy was greeted with ‘unanimous and cordial approval in our trenches’. It was not. Nor did the spirit of the ‘Christmas Truce’ wither in the days that followed. Philip Gibbs recognised that although ‘it became so apparent that army orders had to be issued stopping such truces’ they were not always obeyed. Local truces, and what he described as ‘secret treaties’, were agreed by which soldiers agreed to keep up the appearance of constantly shooting at each other without actually targeting the enemy. It could not last. Units were changed. New officers came up the line.

And so the first Christmas and New Year of the war passed into history and the mythology of times rewritten. Men were once again coerced to massacre each other by powers beyond their ken.

Philip Gibbs was one of a dying breed of investigative journalists who refused to buckle to officialdom. He was deported back to Britain by the angry military authorities for his fearless reports in 1914, but, supported by his newspaper, he returned in 1915 as one of the five official war correspondents attached to the British Expeditionary Force. His final words on this period in history remain profoundly sad. ‘ The winter passed in one long wet agony, in one great bog of misery.’ [p,83]

The Sainsbury’s advert sadly misses the point. In the filthy inhumanity of trench warfare decent men wanted peace. They wanted the war to stop. They wanted to go home. At the same time the British public were fed propaganda to sustain an appetite for prolonging the ‘just’ war. Powers that could not be challenged ordained it so. Sainsbury’s Christmas 1914 advert projects the sterilised image which official histories want us to believe. No attempt has been made to analyse why this happened; why brave men on both sides of the divide were sacrificed.

Be assured, there will be no Christmas 2015 advert in similar vein. The High Command on both sides made sure in 1915 that every soldier knew the severe cost of fraternising with the enemy.

[1] Philip Gibbs, The War Dispatches, p. 81.
[2] The Times, 2 January, 1915, p. 3.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Bob Holman, The Sunday Herald, 31, November, 2013, pp. 26-28
[5] The Times, 23 December 1914, p.7.
[6] The Times, 26 December 1914, p.3.
[7] Philip Gibbs, The War Dispatches, p. 83.

The Unholy Spirit

Not untypically, the different churches could also fall out over their individual contributions to the war effort. No religious group wanted to appear less supportive than the other and the issue of priest, ministers or vicars joining the ranks became a sore point between the Church of England and Non-conformist clergy.

At the start of the war the Anglican Archbishops and Bishops agreed that their priests and curates were most needed to bring pastoral comfort to their parishes at home. The ‘ecclesiastical authorities’ declared that vicars and curates should not be allowed to obtain commissions or enlist in the ranks. That had not stopped young men who had not yet completed their divinity courses from joining up. The Bishop of Birmingham pointed out that, ‘our theological colleges, which are ordinarily full of young men about to take [holy] orders…are practically empty because the students have gone to take colours.’ [1] But keeping the ordained clergy out of the firing line remained a bone of contention. In fairness 2,000 Anglican clergymen offered their services at the start of the war to the Chaplain-General to serve with the armed forces [2] The Church of England tried to justify its position. The Bishop of Birmingham wrote in September 1914:

“I know the delights of being at the front and I confess a great longing to be there again…My young clergy think that I am hard because I disapprove of them becoming combatant soldiers…but the clergy are serving England bravely when they minister comfort to the soldier’s widow wife or mother, when they help to send out to help fight for their country, young men who fear God and fear no-one else.’”[3]

Delights of being at the front? He penned that letter just after the retreat from Mons and the first Battle of the Aisne, where the prolonged valour of the British Expeditionary Force bought invaluable time for the defence of Paris at enormous cost. Soldiers would have shuddered at the very notion of the ‘delights of being at the front.’ The mayhem of attack and retreat was steadily replaced by the entrenchment ordered by Sir John French. Thousands on both sides had already been slaughtered but the myth persisted that it would all be over by Christmas. The concept of serving England bravely by comforting those in need of solace hardly acted as inspiration but the roll of recruitment sergeant in holy orders had a powerful effect.

A storm broke after a short letter to The Times on 19 February, 1915 in which the question was raised as to why Anglican vicars stayed ‘comfortably at home’ while Non-conformist and Roman Catholic clergy were enlisting. Chaplains were invaluable in the field, ministering to the wounded and dying, consoling those who had suffered mental and physical exhaustion and providing comfort in desperate situations. The problem was that other clergymen were fighting at the front. A number of non-conformist ministers joined the ranks. [4] The contrast with France was embarrassing. Prior to the war the rift between the Catholic Church and state in France had been absolute, but the necessities of war closed the breech. The Times gave extensive coverage to The Church Militant in France where military chaplains had been reintroduced and priests and monks had joined the army as soldiers. Sympathetic stories of noble Catholic priests found expression in newspapers that had previously ignored them and religion merged into propaganda with unconscionable ease.

And the Bishop of London? Winnington-Ingram continued to enjoy his war. He wrote to Sir John French and invited himself to the Western Front for two weeks over Easter  in 1915. [5] He took a large box of hymn sheets and ten thousand copies of a short pamphlets of prayers and meditations which he himself had written. He met the Field Marshall and ‘every General in the British army to whose quarters he came.’ [6] He addressed the troops as often as he could. His carefully chosen texts included, ‘Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ’ and he praised the virtue of ‘fortitude’ by which he meant sticking it out in the trenches. His itinerary had been personally approved by Sir John French and it included a promise that he would not go up to the trenches. The Bishop kept his promise. The drama of the recorded visit contained an assurance that although he could not go up to the trenches, shells fell close to his entourage ‘once at least’. [7]  He was of course a precious cargo. On another day they ‘had tea close to the German lines in what was known as a warm quarter’. [8] Winnington-Ingram’s only stipulation was to spend Easter Sunday with ‘his own regiment’, the London Rifle Brigade. [9]

He held around sixty services at all the army bases. He visited, ward by ward, twenty-two hospitals in France and spoke to hundreds of men individually and thousands at meetings and services. [10] Sir John French sent a dispatch to Lord Kitchener, which though correctly fulsome in its praise of the bishop’s mission to the troops, added that

“personal fatigue and even danger were completely ignored by his lordship. The Bishop held service virtually under shell fire and it was with difficulty that he could be prevented from carrying on his ministrations under riffle-fire in the trenches.” [11]

Why spoil a good story by sticking to the facts? By such twists of truth, legends are born. He was exactly the kind of hero that the Secret Elite needed to keep recruits flooding across the channel to fuel their war.

There can be no doubt that the Church of England saw it as its duty to maintain the flow of recruits to the great slaughter. It turned Christianity into a jihad for Britain, the Empire and a spurious notion of ‘civilisation’.  When one thinks of the abandonment of humanity, the undermining of civilisation in the name of God and a Holy War, the arrogance of a ‘Christian’ justification that Germany alone was the instigator, the psychological damage inflicted on young minds from the pulpits of certainty, the Church of England has much to ponder in offering an apology for its role in the First World War.

[1] The Times, 20 February, 1915, p.9.
[2] E H Pearce, Letter to The Times 20 February, 1915, p.9.
[3] The Times, 30 September 1914.
[4] The Times, 23 January 1915, p.4.
[5] Rev G Vernon Smith, The Bishop of London’s Visit to the Front, p.10. https://archive.org/details/bishoplondonsvi00smitgoog
[6] Ibid., p. 19.
[7] Ibid., p. 46.
[8] Ibid., p. 49.
[9] Ibid., p. 58.
[10] Ibid., p. 84.
[11] Ibid., p 89.

Sins Of The Fathers

In addressing the Anglican Bishops and senior clergy at Church House, Westminster in February 1915, the Archbishop of Canterbury stated the old justification that he did not “entertain any doubt that our nation could not, without sacrificing principles of honour and justice more dear than life itself, have stood aside and looked idly on the present world conflict.’ [1] He was repeating, almost word for word, Sir Edward Grey’s statement of 3 August 1914. The concept of a Christian duty to fight was virtually universal among the Anglican clergy. Few if any said otherwise from within the ranks of the Church of England. Given such unanimous support for the war by even the most liberal of Anglicans, it is not surprising that the pulpit became an adjunct for the recruiting office. The Archbishop went so far as to state that it was their sacred privilege to bid men ‘to respond ungrudgingly to their country’s call’. [2]

Ponder these words for a moment. Young men, sitting in quiet country churches or great gothic cathedrals were exhorted to go to war, to do their duty, to accept the sacrifices. Their emotions were constantly battered by sermons drawn from the Old Testament that extolled the wrath of an avenging God. How did they feel when the pastoral shepherd dropped the mantle of Christ the Peacemaker and became a bitter recruiting sergeant? Priests and Pastors would often stress duty and equate fighting for Britain and the Empire with fighting for Christ. [3] Others railed against cowardice. The master of St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge said of those who refused to volunteer,

‘It is a pity that we cannot brand that sort of man “Made in fear of Germany.” Would to God we had known when they were born that they would eat our bread and grow and live amongst us, trusted and approved, and yet cowards. We need not have prayed and worked for them.’ [4]

Can you imagine hearing your own brother or son described in such outrageous terms? With what sense of self worth would a young man be left, who internalised these damning words? It was moral blackmail of a nefarious kind.

In the early months of the war a further disconcerting practice of church recruiters was to appeal to the female relatives of potential recruits to take up the cause at home. Men who had not enlisted were ridiculed in the street by middle-class women inspired from the pulpit to taunt and embarrass them into the recruitment centre. At the same time, parents whose sons had enlisted were praised, and bathed in their reflected glory until the true nature of the war was revealed in the lists of dead and missing.

But the most outrageous proponent of the ‘virtuous war’, the prelate who stepped well over the line of Christian decency was the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram. He was an Oxford man who worked hard for the poor in the East End of London and was consequently popular with the people of Bethnal Green. With the blessing of Lord Salisbury in 1901, Winnington-Ingram was appointed to the Bishopric of London and enthroned at St Pauls Cathedral where he remained for thirty eight years. [5] He was one of the most outspoken and patriotic advocates of the war, beloved by the War Office and the Admiralty, who feted him on his visits to front line troops and naval installations.

Winnington-Ingram claimed to have added ten thousand men to the armed services with his sermons and other recruiting crusades. He made no estimate of how many died or were maimed needlessly because of his work for God and country. As Bishop of London, he never shrank from the enthusiastic endorsement of the righteousness of the war and the British cause and the important role the Church of England must play in the whole affair. His favourite text was; ‘better to die than see England a German province’. In return, he was given the second highest award for chivalry for his war service by King George V  who appointed him Knight Commander of the Victorian Order, [6]

Winnington-Ingram’s pronouncements veered from the concerned to the banal. Speaking at a ‘Rally without Shame’ at Westminster Church House in February 1915, he said that the Church had to foster and increase the fortitude of the nation; to comfort the mourners and inculcate a happier and brighter view of death. [7] What  did that involve? Cheer up, your only son is dead? Don’t get too upset; it was all in a good cause? His concept of comforting the mourners did not extend to the enemy. It was an odd kind of Christianity. Winnington-Ingram will long be remembered for words of a very different kind.

 After a year of war, the Bishop called for the men of England to

“band in a great crusade -we cannot deny it- to kill Germans. To kill them, not for the sake of killing, but to save the world; to kill the good as well as the bad; to kill the young men as well as the old, to kill those who have showed kindness to our wounded as well as those fiends who crucified the Canadian sergeant, who superintended the Armenian massacres, who sank the Lusitania… and to kill them lest the civilisation of the world should itself be killed.” [8]

Apologists have claimed that these words have been taken out of context, but it is difficult to imagine any context at all in which they could comfortably sit. Dress these words any way you can but they will still reflect a blood-thirsty crusade against Germany. Winnington-Ingram went further by adding, ‘as I have said a thousand times, I look upon it as a war for purity, I look upon everyone who dies in it as a martyr.’ [9] British, of course; one can only assume that Germans went to hell. This is a theme he returned to time and again. He wrote in his sermons, ‘this nation has never done a more Christ-like thing than when it went to war in August 1914…the world has been redeemed again by the precious blood shed on the side of righteousness.’ [10] In words that have been repeated to spur the modern-day jihadist, Bishop Ingram invoked the God of war.

He was also ready to absorb every word of anti-German propaganda and repeated stories of atrocities without caution. His reference to the crucified Canadian soldier was one such myth that circulated early in the war. It was a vicious lie wrapped in fear and loathing to inspire vengeance. Propaganda was an important source for the tales of unforgivable German wickedness the Churches were willing to perpetuate. Clergymen of all faiths became both participants in and victims of propaganda. Many Anglican ministers found it hard to believe that civilized Germans could be responsible for the atrocities claimed in the initial stories. However, the burning of Louvain and especially the university library, the horrors of the Bryce Report [see blog of 10 September] and the sinking of the Lusitania were all instrumental in changing their minds. Once their faith in German civilization had been breached, nearly every atrocity story in circulation was accepted and transmitted to their flocks. [11] They took their texts from a different Bible, one written by the propagandist at Wellington House or an unnamed journalist from the Northcliffe stables.

Perhaps the last word should go to Brigadier-General F P Crozier, who wrote in his book, ‘A Brass Hat in No-Man’s Land’:  ‘The Christian churches are the finest blood-lust creators which we have, and of them we made free use.’

[1] The Times, 10 February 1915, page 5.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Kevin Christopher Fielden,, “The Church of England in the First World War.”
[4] C.H.W. Johns, “Who is on the Lord’s Side?”  Sermons for the Times  no. 9 (1914), p.14.
[5] Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Jeremy Morris, ‘Ingram, Arthur Foley Winnington [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36979.
[6] Marrin, Albert. The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War. p.181.
[7] The Times 10 February, 1915, p.5.
[8] Annette Becker, A Companion to World War 1, pp., 237-238.
[9] Winnington-Ingram, The Potter and the Clay, p. 42.
[10] Ibid., p. 229.
[11] Fielden, , “The Church of England in the First World War. p.42.

The Judas Kiss

In a spirit of reconciliation and humility there is great cause for the Church of England to reflect on its behaviour during the war, and apologise. Not since Jesus was betrayed in Gethsemane has Christianity been so wilfully sold out.

If the Church of England was ‘the Conservative Party at prayer’, [1] the most senior prelates and professors of divinity who headed that Church represented the Secret Elite in conclave. Promoted and championed by inner-circle power brokers like the Earl of Roseberry, the men who in August 1914 hailed the ‘Holy and Righteous War’ [2] owed their allegiance to God, All Souls, Oxford and the Secret Elite, though not necessarily in that order. They saw their role as teachers and leaders, to state the given causes for the war, to explain the meaning of the war, to maintain morale on the home front and to remind the public that the primary obligation of young men was to enlist. [3] In other words, it was Germany’s fault, Britain had to save civilisation, the war had to be seen through no matter the sacrifice and it was every man’s duty to serve.

Before examining the role of the Church of England from 1914 onwards, we should understand that its political power rested both with a select section of the chosen hierarchy and with the Prime Minister and senior members of the House of Lords who appointed them. The C. of E. was represented in the House of Lords by the two archbishops, York and Canterbury, the bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester, and 21 diocesan bishops in order of seniority.  It was a system steeped in English history, a by-product of Henry Tudor’s reformation. The real control of the Church had once rested with the Crown but had been slowly transferred to Parliament between the fifteenth and seventeenth century. The Prime Minister appointed bishops, though they had to be approved by a ‘cathedral chapter’ or council of high church officials, [4] a strange anachronism given that a Presbyterian such as Campbell-Bannerman, or the Welsh non-conformist, Lloyd George, could be involved in the process of election.

The Church of England was the religious preserve of the middle and upper classes, with its ministry drawn from university graduates, traditionally from Cambridge and Oxford. [5] In the very class-conscious world of pre-war Britain, it aimed to place an educated gentleman in every parish church across the kingdom [6] which aligned well with John Ruskin’s philosophy of a ruling class oligarchy, but alienated many working class Christians. Indeed, the vast majority of Anglican churchmen were openly hostile to Trades Union and labour movements and they feared the social unrest which was assumed to accompany them.

On the eve of what might have been the first general strike in England, William Randolph Inge, the Dean of St. Paul’s, summed up the alarm felt by his associates when he ‘denounced the unions as criminal combinations whose leaders deserved to be executed as rebels against society.’ [7] This was the same Dean Inge who profited from the war while extolling it as God’s work. His lucrative shareholding in Vickers Ltd was not unusual. A roll-call of Bishops who invested in the armaments firms like Vickers Ltd., Armstrong-Whitworth Ltd. or John Brown and co., included the bishops of Adelaide, Chester, Hexham, Newcastle and Newport. [8]

There can be no question about the Secret Elite pedigree of the most important Anglican clerics in August 1914. [9] Cosmo Gordon Lang was recruited from All Souls by Lord Roseberry, and enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks of the church. His parish work in Leeds was followed by a quick promotion to Dean of Divinity at Magdalen College in Oxford. Cosmo Lang became the suffragan (assistant) Bishop of Stepney from which comparatively lowly post he shot to the Archbishopric of York in 1908.

At the invitation of prime minister Herbert Asquith, it took Lang a mere 18 years to rise to the second most esteemed office in the Anglican Church. He decreed that the war was ‘righteous’ [10] and was supported in this by all of his fellow Bishops.  Another influential cleric, the Dean of Durham, Henley Henson was similarly an All Souls man. His War Times Sermons, published in 1915, extolled the allied cause and by 1918 he was controversially installed as the Bishop of Durham and therefore became a Member of the House of Lords. The interlocking association between the Church of England hierarchy and the Secret Elite was again demonstrated in the elevation of the Editor of the Church Quarterly Review, Arthur Cayley Headlam, a fellow of All Souls for around forty years, to the professorship of Divinity at Oxford. He was later to be appointed Bishop of Gloucester. Headlam’s brother was deeply involved with Viscount Alfred Milner and took charge of the Department of Information during the war. The links go ever on. A.L. Smith, inner core member of Secret Elite, produced a number of pamphlets including The Christian Attitude to War.  It basically encouraged Christians, like himself, to put aside the teachings of the New Testament and the Prince of Peace, and give their all to the war effort

When war was declared the Oxford Dons amassed an extensive 87 pamphlet assault on every aspect of learned justification to ‘prove’ German guilt. This was met by a heartfelt cry from German theologians to American newspapers that a systematic network of lies emanated from Britain to blame Germany for the war to the extent that they denied the right of Germans to invoke the assistance of God. Ah, there we have it; God was an Englishman. The pamphlet, To Christian Scholars of Europe and America; A Reply from Oxford to German Address to Evangelical Christians by Oxford Theologians published on 9 September 1914, was a perfect example of the extent of Secret Elite influence. They immediately enlisted 14 theologians at Oxford, including five professors of divinity, to write the above named pamphlet dismissing the claims from German theologians as nonsense. The Oxford ‘Divines’ condescendingly admonished the Germans for failing to study the events that led up to the war and concluded, ‘Will not the Christian scholars of other lands share our conviction that the contest in which our country has engaged is a contest on behalf of the supreme interests of Christian civilization.’  [11] Consider the arrogance and self-glorification of this argument. Oxford could pronounce that Germany had no right to ask God’s blessing on their war, had failed to study the true causes of the war or the political ‘utterances’ of their own countrymen, while Britain and the Empire were fighting for the ‘supreme interests of Christian civilisation’. The supreme interests for which British soldiers were sacrificed were those of the bankers, financiers, armaments producers, politicians and charlatans who comprised the Secret Elite.

A commonly repeated theme among Anglican leaders was exemplified in a sermon given by  Cosmo Lang in October 1914. Archbishop Lang alluded to the German philosopher Nietzsche and the common British interpretation of his writings to conclude that ‘might makes right.’ He insisted ‘there could be no peace until this German spirit had been crushed” and thus paradoxically appealed to ‘friends of peace… to be supporters of our war’. [12] Note the language. German spirit had to be crushed; not beaten, crushed.  It is interesting to note that those who took a stance against the war were few in number and drawn from ‘an important cluster of socialists, Liberals [and] philosophical pacifists,’ while there was virtually a total lack of resistance to the war by any vicar of the Church of England.[13] Indeed not. Time and again church leaders denied the very basis of Christian teaching, discarded the tenet of man’s conscience and denied that objection to the war was an acceptable stance for any Christian. They followed the Bishop of Oxford’s blunt message: ‘I do not hold the views of those who are seeking exemption to military service on the grounds of conscientious objection to war under any circumstances.’ [14] Amen.

[1] The Times 17 July 1917, p.3. (Maude Roythen)
[2] The Times, 31 August, 1914, p.4.
[3] Albert Marrin, The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War. p. 179.
[4] Kevin Christopher Fielden, “The Church of England in the First World War.” (2005). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1080. http://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1080
[5] Hugh McLeod,. Religion and Society in England, 1850-1914. p.20.
[6] Marrin, The Last Crusade. p. 12.
[7] Christian Times, 11 July 1914.
[8] Henry Newbold, War Trust Exposed, pp. 14–15.
[9] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 25.
[10] J. G. Lockhart, Cosmo Gordon Lang (1949) p. 246.
[11] Oxford Pamphlets, 1914-1915; To Christian Scholars of Europe and America; A Reply from Oxford to German Address to Evangelical Christians by Oxford Theologians.
[12] The Times 12 October 1914, p.5.
[13] Arthur Marwick, The Deluge; British Society and the First World War, p.33.
[14] The Times 16 March 1916, p. 9.

Consoling Fantasies

Once war had been declared, the psychological ground rules changed. No matter the regret, no matter the stupidity the lack of principle or the risk, the fact of war altered everything. While acknowledging that Britain had nothing to gain, and that ‘some day we shall all regret it’, the Guardian’s view on 5 August 1914 reflected the complete volte-face that war imposes on a nation’s psyche. The new message they delivered bore all the hallmarks of Nelson’s call to arms. ‘Now there is nothing for Englishmen to do but to stand together and help by every means in their power to the attainment of our common object – an early and decisive victory over Germany.’ [1] Music indeed to the Secret Elite. Once war had been declared, the tipping point of public opinion did as it always has; swung immediately behind the flag of loyalty, duty and national pride, all of which become part of ‘the cause’. There was still a vibrant opposition to war, but it had little focus. Once the commitment had been sealed in blood through the death of a soldier or sailor fighting for that cause, then most of the nation would rally behind those who died.

Undoubtedly there were those who were genuinely pleased and excited at the thought of going to war. London teemed with boisterous crowds, anxious to hear the latest news. Asquith wrote somewhat uncharitably of being ‘escorted between Westminster and Downing Street surrounded by crowds of loafers and holiday-makers’ [2] and those who wanted to find out first what was to happen, needed to be close to where decisions were being made, in Westminster, Whitehall and even Buckingham Palace. [3] But initial reaction to the news of the declaration of war varied across the country. We in the twenty-first century live in a time of instant information. News ‘breaks’ across the world as a wave on the shore. Devastating, era-changing news crashes like a tsunami, swamping us, with destruction close behind. In 1914 news travelled relatively slowly in that while national newspapers were available in all major towns and cities and local newspapers distilled the main events, often amidst cattle-sales and the current price of local livestock, large pockets of remoter population heard only eventually, by word of mouth, about a war in Europe of which they had previously known nothing.

The first limited outbursts of euphoria did not last long, and were rapidly replaced at the end of August by a general feeling of ‘seeing it through’. [4] This early resignation was mirrored by a remarkable transformation in the very Liberal Press that had stoutly resisted jingoism in July. Two themes were developed to reassure the British public that the war was both necessary and justified. The first was the claim that ‘we have no quarrel with the German people.’ The Daily News of 8 August insisted that ‘it is not the German people with whom we are at war…it is the tyranny of a despotic rule, countersigned by Krupps…in this war we are engaged in fighting for the emancipation of Germany as well as for the liberties of Europe. [5]

Worse still, the second theme developed into a concept of a ‘holy war’, an early 20th century jihad. On 7 August, 1914, a campaign began in the Liberal Daily Chronicle to glorify what was underway in Europe as ‘the war to end wars’. It resonated of Cecil Rhodes at the inception of the Secret Elite, when he talked of the creation of ‘so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity’. [6] The Daily Chronicle pronounced that ‘every sword that is drawn against Germany is a sword drawn for peace’ and blamed Germany for having arrested civilisation and darkened the hopes of mankind for forty years. [7] The author of this emotive justification was the writer and journalist, H G Wells.

That H.G. Wells, the prolific writer of science fiction, contemporary novels and social commentary should have emerged as the voice to soothe the troubled souls of British liberals requires examination. What circumstances promoted him from author to moral philosopher, from the recipient of harsh criticism from the Times Literary Supplement and the Spectator in 1907 to the champion of war justification in the first weeks of August 1914? He kept interesting company as a member of the Fabian Society, and more so as one of the ‘Co-efficients’ the exclusive dining club which had in its select membership such notable Secret Elite members and associates as Alfred Milner, Richard Haldane, Leo Amery, Arthur Balfour, and Sir Edward Grey. Wells nestled comfortably with the Secret Elite’s inner core. In 1912, Lord Northcliffe had asked him to write a series of articles for the Daily Mail on labour unrest and in 1914 his collection of articles and essays was published in An Englishman Looks at the World. With Northcliffe as his publisher, Milner and the Round Table members as his companions, Wells was unveiled as the reasoned voice from which the nation, especially the liberal nation, could take reassurance

Within a week of the article being printed in the Daily Chronicle, Wells had been invited to write an article for the Liberal Daily News under the banner headline, ‘The War to End Wars’, where he predicted that, ‘We will fight, if needful, until the children die of famine in our homes, though every ship we have is at the bottom of the sea. We mean to fight this war to its very finish … and we will come out of this war with out hands as clean as they are now, unstained by any dirty tricks.’ [8] Such chilling words, so early in the conflict, boded ill for truth and objectivity.

His prediction was disturbingly prescient though fundamentally flawed. Children did indeed die of famine, mainly in Germany. The fleet that was consigned to the bottom of the sea, was the Kaiser’s, and the hands of the British government, manipulated by the power above them, could hardly have been more deeply stained by the blood of innocents. Wells the great prophet of worlds to come became the great propagandist, the maker of myths with an absurd, disturbing reinvention of truth.

And this was printed in a major Liberal newspaper whose editor, A G Gardiner, had signed the manifesto issued by the British Neutrality Committee, published in the Manchester Guardian on 3 August. [9] A truly remarkable turn-around had taken place in the editorial stance in Liberal newspapers within the first few days after the declaration of war. To be fair to the Conservative press, the Times and the Daily Mail had remained consistently anti-German for a decade and adopted an unbending support for the Asquith government, for the time being. They had forecast war and cheered its outbreak.

Before the end of August, Wells wrote another article for The Nation [10] in which he conceived the notion that ‘we fight not to destroy a nation, but a nest of evil ideas’ and he challenged the Church of England to become a propagandist for peace, by which, in the logic of his twisted mind, he meant war. He found no meaning in the Christianity of a Christian who advocated pacifism, but only in the Christian who goes to war to bring about eventual peace. [11] But his coup de grace, his descent into the inferno of burning banalities, his most unforgivable distortion was the casual dismissal of Russia’s barbaric anti-Semitism.

Without any apparent embarrassment Wells wrote that ‘it is unfortunate for Russia that she has come into conspicuous conflict with the Jews. She has certainly treated them no worse than she has treated her own people’. His reinterpretation of the systematic victimisation of the Jews was unforgivable. He blithely predicted in The Nation on 22 August 1914, that ‘while Russia has the will to oppress the world, she will never have the power; when she has the power she will cease to have the will.’ Read that again, please. As a statement it is nonsensical absurdity presented as reason. What he is really saying to the public is, ‘stop agonising about Russia’s inhumanity. They’re all right, honest’.

The cathartic, born-again, justification for war against Germany that now gushed from the Liberal newspapers in those first few days, significantly assured a great many people in Britain that all would be well. As the magazine The Nation stated in all sincerity, this was a ‘perfectly good’ war. [12]. And it was what people needed to hear. ‘We would see this through’. It would be ‘the war to end wars’. ‘Civilisation’ would be saved. Germany would be saved from itself. But the process of rationalisation went further. It quickly passed from reassurance that Britain was ‘doing the right thing’, to a delusion that it was in fact involved in a holy war. From pulpits and editorial chairs, from parliament to recruitment stations, the idea that this war was a spiritual conflict between the forces of good and the forces of evil was deliberately sown and spread like a new-found gospel.

So the Secret Elite worked their alchemy through H.G. Wells and others like G.K. Chesterton. He developed Well’s pro-Russian revisionism into a trite exhortation that no-one should worry whether it was right to fight with the ‘Russ against the Pruss’ because ‘the Russ was only a barbarian by accident, while the Pruss was a Barbarian by design’. [13] It was a time of madness which for these writers proved financially rewarding.

H.G. Wells lived long enough to be haunted by his own excesses. [14] In his Experiment in Autobiography, published in 1934, he eventually faced the ‘unpalatable truth’ that his ‘war for civilisation’, his ‘war to end war’ was nothing more than a consoling fantasy [15] and he acknowledged the ‘flaming actuality’ that ‘we were fighting for King and Country and they were fighting for Kaiser and Fatherland. [16] How many thousands of young men did he urge into the trenches while he, exempt from service, was free to provide what he himself called, a ‘consoling fantasy’? Though he berated himself for his ‘rash and eager confidence’ in the Foreign Office and the War Office in the early months of the war, his pro-war zeal ultimately embarrassed him and he admitted he was wrong to attack conscientious objectors and pacifists in his later books [17] But the damage was done. He had accepted Lord Northcliffe’s coin and the cost was borne by those he deluded with his grotesque fantasies.

[1] Manchester Guardian, 5 August, 1914, p. 4.
[2] Michael and Eleanor Brock, HH Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 157.
[3] Stephen Roberts, Did the British People Welcome the Declaration of War in August 1914?, History Review, 2005. issue 52.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Irene Cooper Willis, England’s Holy War, p. 88.
[6] W. T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, p. 59.
[7] Daily Chronicle, 7 August 1914.
[8] H. G. Wells, Daily News, 14 August 1914.
[9] Irene Cooper Willis, England’s Holy War, p. 61.
[10] The Nation 29 August, 1914.
[11] Irene Cooper Willis, England’s Holy War, p. 98.
[12] Ibid., p. 111.
[13] The Daily Mail, 2 November, 1914.
[14] Phillip Knightly, The First Casualty, p. 83.
[15] H. G. Wells, An Experiment in Autobiography, p.573.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid., pp.580-81.