First World War Galleries Table of contents

7.Feeding the Front

In 1915 Britain faced falling army recruitment and shells shortages at the Front. To win the war, a transformation was needed. A ‘home front’ was created to supply the fighting fronts’ constant demands for men, weapons, equipment and food.

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This official recruiting poster was the idea of Arthur Gunn, director of the London printing firm that produced it. Gunn felt guilty at not having volunteered for service himself. He saw the persuasive potential of a child’s awkward question to a ‘shirker’ father once the war was over. Shortly after the poster’s publication, Gunn himself enlisted. But the public soured at the use of shame to boost recruitment, undermining the impact of such posters.

War service badges and war work certificates were issued to show that men were engaged on vital war work. They helped employers shield their male workers from the attentions of recruiting officers, zealous patriots and tiresome accusations of cowardice, The badges were tightly regulated to stop any ‘shirkers’ from wearing them fraudulently.

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The film ‘A Call to the Young’, excerpts of which are shown here, was made after the introduction of conscription. The origins of the film are not clear, but it reflects the crushing pressure on the more reluctant British men to do their bit.

Employers despaired at losing skilled workers to the Army. This printed letter was sent by a manager to his men at the Coventry Ordnance Works, a munitions factory. He implores them to ignore ‘well-meaning but misguided people’ and to stay at the Works. By early 1916 army recruiting officers had stripped Britain of nearly 30 per cent of its male workforce.

There was organised opposition to the growing calls for compulsory military service. The leaflets shown here were distributed by the pacifist Independent Labour Party and the No Conscription Fellowship, whose members believed that the war was wrong. Even some members of the government saw conscription as a grave threat to Britain’s longstanding tradition of personal choice and freedom.

When one sees young men idling…one thinks: ‘Why are they not at war?’

Arnold Bennett, British writer
By 1916 Britain needed more soldiers. But volunteer numbers had fallen. Compulsory military service, conscription, was made law.
Many argued that, in a war to defend freedom, men should freely choose whether to fight. But the demands of war had now become too great for a voluntary system. Conscription confirmed Britain’s commitment to total war.
Were all men now conscripted?

Many men were not called up because they were needed for vital war work at home. Others were exempted because their families would suffer real hardship if they went to the Front or because they were medically unfit.

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This letter was sent by an employer to a conscientious objector looking for a job. The applicant was rejected for being ‘a servant of Germany’. ‘Conchies’ were regarded with downright contempt by most British people. One army officer described them as ‘England’s cowardly and most useless people’. Their numbers were relatively few. Of 2.5 million men conscripted, less than one per cent raised moral or political objections.

The first Military Service Act on 27 January 1916 made conscription law for single men aged between 18 and 41. Four months later married men were called up. Over the course of the war standards were gradually relaxed to capture more men, eventually up to the age of 50. Conscription was never enforced in Ireland. While New Zealand and Canada followed Britain’s example, Australia and South Africa did not.

The Derby Scheme was a last appeal for volunteers. In October 1915 Lord Derby, Director of Recruiting, called upon men aged between 18 and 41 to sign ‘attestation’ forms declaring that they would serve, but only when absolutely necessary. These ‘Derby men’ wore brassards to prove they were ready to fight when called upon - khaki for the Army, blue for the Royal Navy.

In November 1915 Prime Minister Herbert Asquith issued this appeal. He was responding to the fury of married men who had attested under the Derby Scheme, only to find that thousands of single men still had not volunteered. Asquith hinted that conscription would be introduced if more men did not enlist. But by December 1915 fewer than half of the eligible 5 million men had registered. The door for conscription was now open.

This cartoon appeared in the rabidly patriotic paper ‘John Bull’. It shows a conscientious objector lazily smoking at his fireside while his entire family is fighting or on war work. His dandyish clothes and cigarette holder identify him as a ‘Knut’. These idle, fashion-obsessed young men had been the object of amused scorn in pre-war years.

Bernard Taylor, a pacifist, refused to fight. Granted exemption, he worked instead as a non-combatant in France with the Quaker War Victims Relief Association. He wears their armband in this photograph. His friend, an ‘absolutist’ who objected to helping the war effort in any way, sent him the letter shown here from prison. 6,000 absolutists were imprisoned for their beliefs and often received brutal treatment.

These documents relate to William Harrison, one of 16,500 conscientious objectors who had to prove the sincerity of their beliefs before tribunals. Harrison argued that, ‘War inevitably means … that the nations involved degenerate and become like brutes’. A former colleague testified that Harrison had long opposed ‘all forms of militarism’. But the appeals were rejected and Harrison was later sentenced to hard labour by a court martial.