The Telegraph Book of Readers' Letters from the Great War (36 page)
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Authors: Gavin Fuller
30 August 1916
Sib H. Smith-Dorrien's Appeal
SIR â I can no longer refrain from invoking your help in an appeal to certain theatrical managers to endeavour to raise the tone of performances they prepare for the public, especially for the younger members of our fighting professions.
I am convinced that our gallant sailors and soldiers themselves would be the first to admit that if they were given their choice, they would prefer a performance which, whilst cheerful and inspiriting, appealed to the best side of their
patriotic natures, and not exhibitions of scantily dressed girls and songs of doubtful character.
The whole nation's heart is at last set on winning this great war, and an important factor undoubtedly is the cleanliness of mind and the nobility of purpose of our heroes on sea and land, and it seems entirely unnecessary, and certainly wrong, to put into their heads demoralising thoughts, such as they must obtain from many performances now appearing on the stage.
Yours truly,
H.S. Smith-Dorrien, General
Cell Farm, Old Windsor
10 October 1916
Firemen and Tribunal Conditions
SIR â The recent circular issued by the president of the Local Government Board to the local and appeal tribunals refers to previous instructions whereby the granting of exemptions should be conditional that some form of voluntary national service should be undertaken, and it provides that it may be unwise to ask a man who is already engaged upon national
service to undertake additional service in another branch or branches.
The executive of the National Fire Brigades Union specially called the attention of the Government to the obvious hardships incurred upon fire brigade men who are not classed in a certified occupation, whereby additional duties were imposed upon them by local tribunals.
It is not generally known to the public that the duties of the fire brigades have been multiplied since the outbreak of war, extra voluntary air-raid duties, extra hours needed for the training of recruits, extra risks incurred by munition factories working at high pressure, the protection of numerous naval and military works, such as depots, hospitals, camps, &c. All the foregoing must receive attention, no matter how much the fire brigade are reduced by the loss of trained and competent staffs. It is for the national welfare and for the sake of humanity that protection from fire must be afforded. The service will therefore welcome the removal of the extra compulsory duties, and it is hoped that the suggestion of the president of the Local Government Board will be made retrospective by the local and appeal tribunals, seeing that the season when fires are generally more prevalent is close at hand.
I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
W.G. Webster, Acting Secretary, National Fire Brigades' Union
22 Northumberland Avenue
âDangers' of Compulsion Mr O'Brien's Suggestion
SIR â The abortive partition proposals did more than the Dublin severities to recreate a disaffection which had practically ceased to exist. It passes belief that any Ministers in their senses can now be meditating the still worse blunder of military compulsion, which would make that disaffection all but universal and irreconcilable, and yet the incredible seems to be happening. While reasoning has still any chance of a hearing, give me leave to submit a few practical considerations, before the last voice for reconciliation between the two countries is stifled.
1. No Irish Nationalist ever promised peace in Ireland except on condition of Home Rule. The feebleness â not to say double dealing â of two English Ministries has left us in a chaos in which Home Rule is neither granted nor rejected â neither dead nor alive. And this torment of Tantalus has been rendered unbearable by Mr Lloyd George's success in procuring from a pensioned Irish party their consent to what Mr Sexton (surely no mad Sinn Féiner) has described as the vivisection of our country.
2. Nevertheless, even a disappointed Ireland has not only contributed to the Army 100,000 Nationalists resident in Ireland, but 150,000 no less ardent Nationalists in Great
Britain, and at least 150,000 more from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa â a considerably larger contingent than even Canada, with twice Ireland's population, and five times her wealth, has been able to put in the field. Sir Edward Carson has not been able to furnish more than 25,000 of his Covenanters, but because they have been concentrated in one purely Covenanting Division, and have been allowed to fight as a unit in the same field, with a gallantry of which all their countrymen are proud, England rings with gratitude to the Ulster Division, while Nationalist soldiers, at least fifteen times more numerous, and nobody will deny equally gallant, are unfortunately scattered incoherently among dozens of divisions, and, far from earning England's undying thanks, read little except bitter reproaches and insults to their race. Those who would have Englishmen believe that Irish soldiers in Picardy and Macedonia are indignant that compulsory service is not enforced against their kindred at home know so little of these soldiers' inmost hearts that the effect upon their moral of conscription in Ireland is, on the contrary, one of the gravest of the dangers that ought to give wise statesmanship pause. And those who are horrified at the wastage of the Irish divisions being made up by Englishmen strangely forget that the wastage of dozens of London, Liverpool, Manchester and Tyneside regiments is very largely made good by Irish Nationalists.
3. What would be the practical effect on England's fighting strength of a campaign to enforce Conscription in Ireland? I am quite aware of the bearing a candid answer may
have on the future prospects of Home Rule. That consideration has quite certainly its weight with the English and Ulster politicians, who are stirring up the clamour for the coercion of Ireland. It is nonetheless of as much importance to England as to Ireland that those who have struggled hardest for peace and goodwill should fearlessly declare that the enforcement of Compulsory Service would mean the most horrible campaign for the reconquest of Ireland England has ever had to undertake. No Nationalist member of Parliament of any section could let a Compulsory Bill pass through the House of Commons without a resistance taking every possible form of violent and world-resounding protests, and without devoting their lives to an uncompromising campaign to make oppression bitter for the Government and Parliament of England. It is not even certain that they would be without an unexpected amount of aid from English Liberalism of the old strain, laid under enchantment though it has been of late by the wizardry of Mr Lloyd George, and from the Labour Party, not a dozen of whom could hope to be re-elected without Irish Nationalist votes.
And the Parliamentary resistance would be only the preliminary to a struggle from parish to parish in Ireland, in which England could not count upon support of any kind, moral or material, except her own bayonets and machine guns. For obvious reasons, I abstain from gratifying the enemy by particularising the nature of that resistance. Mr
Duke is doubtless in possession of information sufficiently enlightening on the subject. That part of it which would be carried on with firearms before recruits could be laid hands upon would be the smallest part of the difficulty of coping with a universal system of passive resistance, such as all who have endeavoured to coerce Ireland in the past can picture to themselves, and such as no army can effectively conquer. There are those who would console you with the suggestion that the Irishman is a dangerous man to run away from. Ask your German enemies whether an Irishman is not sometimes a dangerous man to stand up to.
All is lost as between the two countries if it be held a bad turn to England to make her realise that in such a struggle she would be dealing with a race as solid and as desperate as the people of France, Belgium or Serbia in their own fight for life. And for what is this deadly enmity of a race to be challenged? To add a body of at the utmost 60,000 valid recruits to an army of five or six millions, and to do it by maintaining in Ireland an army as numerous at the least, with the certainty that whatever Irish recruits might be kidnapped by the press-gang would return from the war a trained army of infuriated enemies of England. What would be the effect upon the Allies, upon the United States and upon the weakening Central Empires, of this bitter and, in the nature of things, never-ending war upon the Irish race, surely no man in the Cabinet can be so infatuated as to speculate without horror.
Nor let it be imagined that Ireland's resistance would be daunted by the fate of the Home Rule Act, should English prejudice grow unhappily once more uncontrollable. What
Cardinal Logue said of partition can be repeated with redoubled emphasis of conscription, that all Irish Nationalists worth their salt would âprefer to go out into the wilderness for fifty years more' rather than submit to the one or to the other.
For the recruiting difficulty, as for all other Irish difficulties, there can be only one remedy that will not be worse than the disease. It is to call together the responsible heads of all Irish political parties, interests and denominations to devise a new basis of national self-government for their country, and to have their recommendations ratified by Parliament, subject to any modifications an Imperial conference may hereafter find to be equitable. One would suppose it is the most obvious of counsels, but it has never yet been tried, and if it is to be effective for recruiting purposes or for any others, it must be tried promptly and before the war is over.
Your obedient servant,
William O'Brien
Mallow
18 October 1916
SIR â The mothers of England will owe you a debt of the deepest gratitude if through the agency of your columns you
can open up the question of distinctive badges for the fallen, and obtain for us a coveted decoration in memory of our beloved dead. As the mother of an only son who volunteered in the first month of the war at the age of eighteen, and laid down his life at Ypres only seven months later, I thank you with all my heart for allowing your columns to voice this burning question.
Yours gratefully,
One of the Mothers
Wembley
2 January 1917
SIR â For some time past I have received appeals regarding a hardship which officers sent home wounded or suffering from illnesses contracted on foreign service are encountering on their arrival in this country, from what I feel sure is mainly due to insufficient forethought or organisation. As the House is not sitting, may I be allowed to allude to it in your columns? It is the practice of despatching these officers to hospitals far away from their respective homes, where they have no friends, and where, owing to the increasing difficulties of travel, visits from any friends must necessarily be few and far between. It is not as if these officers were all cot patients. Many are convalescent, some are perfectly fit, and only
waiting to have minor operations, and are not undergoing any medical or surgical treatment at all.