Ww1

Let us say once more what we said as emphatically as we could last week – that the first thing to do is to get Lord Kitchener the five hundred thousand men who he must have to make the country safe. Till that is done, till we have got the men for the firing line, all philanthropic schemes, however good, nay, however essential in themselves, must wait. Sterilized dressings are absolutely necessary, but they must not get in front of the rifles. Therefore, once again, the first duty of ever man between nineteen and thirty is to join Lord Kitchener’s Second Army.  That is his way to help. And the

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 15 August 1914: The war continues to be as amazing as ever. We have now had actual firing for over ten days and yet there has been no serious invasion of French soil. What one was always told would happen in the great war, and what undoubtedly the German meant should happen, was a steady and rapid advance of the stupendous tide of German soldiers into France. Wave was to succeed wave of men on the frontier and all of them were to have their faces turned to France and Paris. The sea, no doubt, was to break in through Belgium, but Belgium,

Under the heading ‘How can I help?’, The Spectator of 8 August 1914 advised young men on the process of joining the army, and suggested that older men try the Red Cross or a rifle club, with the warning: ‘The rifle club should only be for those who by age and want of training are not able to do anything better. By joining or forming rifle clubs they might, however, in the end be able to do most useful work.’ It concluded with the following advice for women: ‘We have kept to the last the answer to the question put by patriotic Englishwomen as to how they can help. Here,

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 8 August 1914: ‘The question that every man is asking is, What news of the Fleet? As we write on Friday it is almost impossible to answer this question. All we know is that our Fleet is in the North Sea and doing its duty. In all human probability it is as we write heavily engaged in action, but how that action goes it is impossible to say. Modern naval battles take up almost as much room as modern land battles, and it is quite possible that a fight begun off the North of Scotland may be decided far to the South, or

Yesterday was a chance for people to remember relatives who died in the 1914-1918 conflict, often the only record of their existence being grainy old portraits from a grandmother’s mantelpiece and a gravestone in France. I have no idea what my grandfather did, although he was old enough to be fighting by the end of the war; he was a journalist too so he probably just sat behind a typewriter encouraging others to fight and making stuff up. I do remember as a child hearing about how my great-uncle, Charles Leaf, had suffered terrible shellshock in the trenches. But I only recently read my grandmother’s memoirs, which were published in

This week’s issue is dated 2 August. On that date 100 years ago, my great-grandfather, Norman Moore (always known as ‘NM’), went to Sunday Mass. ‘Father Ryan,’ he noted in his diary, ‘seemed hardly to have thought of the war… I told [him] I felt uncertain whether August would be a good time for a mission to Protestants but I gave him the £5 I had promised.’ Later, he and his wife Milicent went to tea with their Sussex neighbours, Lord and Lady Ashton, who ‘seemed very little informed of the gravity of the situation’. Back at home, a telegram arrived from NM’s friend, Ethel Portal: ‘Germany occupied Luxembourg Reported