ABSTRACT
The neglect of the British volunteers has continued to the present day. Just recently, Niall Ferguson argued that ‘British soldiers . . . were unsure what they were fighting for.’1 For some men, that may have been true. But to project it as a general case ignores the varied motives that volunteers expressed. Perhaps the enlistees, especially the working-class enlistees, did not explain their reasons in the language that a ‘self-consciously clever, confrontational young don’ would recognize easily.2 Nonetheless, the motives did exist and the workers did talk about them. But Ferguson at least acknowledged that the working-class soldier existed as an individual. Too many historians have not.
