The diary that proves Anthony Seldon wrong about the first world war and the public schools

In March 1915 the 27th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, with an already distinguished political career behind him, took the unorthodox step of enlisting, aged 43, as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps. In 1916 he returned to England from France to take up important government duties, but for 14 months he had been a medical orderly on the Western Front, the only cabinet minister to serve in the ranks in the first world war. He was based at the casualty clearing station at Hazebrouck, close to the principal areas of British military activity in 1915. He kept a diary throughout this time — now admirably edited by his cousin Christopher Arnander — giving a unique close-up view of the great war though the eyes of a shrewd participant.

The popular image of nursing volunteers as enchanting angels of mercy gets a battering. Crawford found them competent but bossy and inconsiderate: ‘They ate chocolate all over the operating table and dropped cherry stones on the floor. I always thought it was an unpardonable offence to bring food into a theatre.’ Worse still was their use of precious supplies of milk to wash the leaves of hospital plants.

Most interesting are Crawford’s observations about the new officers in the British army who had enlisted in the first months of the war and nearly all of whom would have been from public schools. His observations cast doubt on the much vaunted claims by the public schools to have taught their pupils lessons of unselfishness, dedication and decent behaviour: some may have benefited, many, clearly did not. As Crawford writes:

How disagreeable some officers are. They talk chiefly about their billets and personal grievances. One never hears a word about the men of the army.… The officer of old standing is much more modest in his manner.

Few of those whom Crawford encountered could speak a word of elementary French and, as soldiers, most seemed amateurs compared with the wounded enemy officer prisoners who passed through the hospital.