ABSTRACT
Home defence troops were retained in Britain, therefore, without a realistic foreign threat. What is to be understood from the foregoing, of course, is that the perceptions which had produced prewar home defence planning aimed at the suppression of possible domestic unrest returned with a vengeance in the last years of the war. Home defence planning against Germany meant, in 1918 as in 1914, preparation to suppress the civil dissent which would be produced or accentuated by the most effective kind of blow, commerce interruption, Germany could land. Let us consider the content of home defence contingency planning to see if there is any evidence that it was being driven, at this juncture, by considerations of internal security. The Volunteers were the First World War equivalent of the Home Guard. Initially simply collections of patriotic enthusiasts, too old to enlist in the army.
