For King and Country

The onset of war caught some of the London public in festive mood. The Times reported that thousands were stranded owing to the suspension of services on the major railway routes over the bank holiday weekend, whilst large crowds dressed in their holiday apparel gathered in Trafalgar Square, along Whitehall and outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, forcing the King to appear no less than three times on the balcony as they chanted ‘we want war’. ¹ Lloyd George, writing in 1938, remembered ‘the warlike crowds that thronged Whitehall and poured into Downing Street … multitudes of young people concentrated in Westminster demonstrating for war against Germany’. ² The many reports of flag-waving crowds, queues forming outside army recruitment offices and young men marching with toy rifles have, until recently, led historians to believe that Britons in 1914 universally greeted the war with rampant enthusiasm. ³ Subsequent studies have tended to undermine this picture. Some anecdotal evidence of popular reactions outside London do cast doubts on the accepted view. In the Sussex coastal town of Littlehampton, a popular tourist resort, it was recorded that the outbreak of war quelled the bank holiday merriment to a level of ‘underlying suspense and subdued enjoyment’. ⁴ In the same manner, at the other end of the country in Newcastle the Revd James Mackay, a Methodist minister, recorded in his diary for 5th August, ‘Weeping women everywhere. There are no great demonstrations of enthusiasm. Everyone feels the awfulness of the situation and a becoming gravity prevails.’ ⁵