ABSTRACT
One point on which historians have generally long been agreed is the depth and scale of war enthusiasm at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Not only did populations in belligerent European countries like Germany and France want war; popular opinion in British white settler dominions easily echoed the pro-war mood of the great metropolitan crowds around Whitehall in the early days of the August crisis. Whether in New South Wales, Australia, Natal, South Africa, or British Columbia, Canada, imperial subjects supported entry into a major European conflict with a mixture of enthusiasm, innocence and naivety. ‘Australians’, according to Bill Gammage, ‘hailed England’s declaration of war on Germany with the most complete and enthusiastic harmony in their history.’1 ‘Naive and conditioned by military training and imperialistic schooling’, New Zealand youths, in the view of Paul Baker, ‘welcomed war and seemed keen to fight it’.2 Even in a rather less obviously unified South Africa, W.K. Hancock cites the tough attitude of Arthur Gillett, Quaker, liberal, and Johannesburg banker; while wrinkling his nose at hysterical jingoism, his belief was ‘fight we must . . . get trained for the day that may come’.3
