The Annual Register 1914 / A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad for the Year 1914

by Anonymous

The unity of the Empire was not less notable. Gifts and offers of money or local produce had poured in since the war began from the Dominions, Crown Colonies, and Protectorates, for the use of the troops or for the relief funds; and the donors comprised not only the Governments, but local groups or associations, private firms, and the population as a whole. From the Dominions came flour and meat; Rhodesia sent tobacco; Jamaica cigarettes; Montserrat guava jelly; Mauritius sugar; South African farmers fruit and eggs; the Emirs of Nigeria gave 38,000l. which was applied to the military expenditure of the Protectorate; a body of Masai sent bullocks, the Kavirondo chiefs 3,000 goats; Niue, in the Cook Islands, sent 164l. to the Empire Defence Fund and offered 200 men, the chiefs describing their island as "a small child that stands up to help the Kingdom of George V." The Somali chiefs and those of Uganda expressed their strong desire to fight for the King.

While the Empire thus drew together, two notable developments occurred in its foreign relations. The first was the formal change in the legal status of Egypt, which was declared to be—what it had long been in fact—a British Protectorate (Dec. 18). The Khedive Abbas, who had become an open enemy, and was in Constantinople, was deposed; his successor, Prince Kamel Pasha, received the title of Sultan; and a British Resident—Colonel Sir Arthur MacMahon—was appointed with the title of High Commissioner instead of, as formerly, Consul-General.

A more novel change was the despatch of a British envoy to the Vatican in the person of Sir Henry Howard, whose mission was to last till the end of the war. Its exact scope was not stated; but it seemed probable that the Pope, whose attempt to effect a truce at the front for Christmas had been frustrated by the opposition of Russia, intended in due time to offer his mediation; if so, the mission was easily intelligible. But it caused some misgiving, and not only among extreme Protestants; for it might conceivably be interpreted abroad as implying some sort of recognition of the temporal power of the Papacy.

It was commonly felt that one of the conditions of peace, whenever it might come, must be the punishment of the persons responsible for the outrages and breaches of the laws of war committed by German soldiers in Belgium and France. Much evidence of these had been collected and sifted, and on December 16 it was announced that a Committee had been appointed to consider this evidence. It was a very strong one: Viscount Bryce was the Chairman; the other members were Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C., Prof. A. L. Fisher, an eminent historian, and Mr. Harold Cox, sometime M.P. for Bath, and editor of the Edinburgh Review.

Meanwhile it was clear that the end of the war could only be hastened by sending more men into the fighting line; and Mr. Bonar Law again spoke at recruiting demonstrations in his constituency of Bootle on December 21. He said that it had been evident for years that Germany was preparing for war with Great Britain as her final objective; because he knew it, he had said (A.R., 1911, p. 262) in the Commons that he did not believe in inevitable wars; if war came, it would be due to the want of human wisdom, and the best and perhaps the sole guarantee of peace was that one country should realise the strength of the other. He had thought that the rapid growth of Russian resources would deter Germany, but she had struck precisely because of its rapidity. Like Napoleon, she had aroused against herself the moral forces of the world. She had not merely ignored these moral forces, but despised them; hence her mistakes. The coast raid had made the British people realise that they were fighting, not a superman, but a wild beast. He eulogised the British Army; no army equal in size to the new Army had ever been raised by voluntary enlistment, nor could it have been so raised anywhere but in Great Britain. We should get all the men we needed, but, if not, compulsion would be demanded by the nation. The Earl of Derby, who also spoke, remarked that Prince Henry of Prussia, one of the heads of the German Navy, knew that Scarborough was defenceless, having visited it in 1912 as a guest.

It was unfortunate that, while so many efforts were being made to stimulate recruiting, the military authorities should have issued a circular implying that soldiers' wives would be under the special supervision of the police. This called forth indignant protests from local authorities and trade unions; but it was explained to mean that the police desired lists of the wives of soldiers, in order to treat them leniently should they be charged with drunkenness. Their increased leisure and their Government allowances tended to increase their temptations to this offence.

A fresh stimulus to patriotic feeling, however, was provided by the group of air raids which marred Christmas peace in this amazing year. On Christmas Eve a British naval airman dropped twelve bombs on an airship shed in Brussels, inflicting, it was hoped, considerable damage on the Parseval airship it was believed to contain. On the same day a German aeroplane attempted to drop a bomb on Dover Castle, but missed its mark by some 400 yards, and, beyond a hole in a bed of cabbages and some broken windows, no damage was done. On Christmas Day another German aeroplane was sighted over Sheerness at 12.35 midday; aided by fog, it went up the Thames as far as Erith, probably to drop bombs on Woolwich Arsenal; but it was chased by three British aeroplanes and fired at by aircraft guns, and an exciting conflict took place within sight of Southend about 1.30; but it escaped, though probably the airman was mortally wounded. Earlier on that day a British raid of considerable significance had been made on Cuxhaven and the German warships lying off that port. Seven naval seaplanes, starting from a point near Heligoland, and escorted by H.M.S. Arethusa and Undaunted, two of the newest light cruisers, and by a destroyer flotilla and several submarines, dropped bombs on the warships and on "points of military significance." The escort was attacked by two Zeppelins and several hostile seaplanes and submarines, but the Zeppelins were easily put to flight, the seaplanes missed the British ships, and the submarines were avoided. None of the other German warships came out; the British ships remained three hours, and re-embarked three of the seven British airmen with their machines, three without them; the seventh, Flight-Commander Hewlett, disabled his machine, which had met with an accident, and was picked up by a Dutch trawler, and allowed some days later to return to England. It was believed that a Zeppelin had been hit, and that the raid, which caused great delight in England, had set up a corresponding degree of disquiet in Germany.

But these exciting episodes had no direct bearing on the fortunes of the war. Its ultimate outcome was likely to depend partly on the cohesive and combative power of the British Empire, partly on the attitude of the greater neutral nations, partly on the economic pressure exercised on Germany by the British Navy, and partly on the ability of Great Britain to adjust her trade to the new conditions imposed by the loss of her best customer and of the sources of supply of the components of many of her manufactured goods. On all these the outlook as the year closed was encouraging. The unity of the Empire had never been more conspicuously manifested, and, as the year closed, it was seen to extend even to the Sudan. Recruiting at home, in spite of the pessimists, was not officially regarded as unsatisfactory, and the difficulties in the equipment of the three (or more) new Armies were apparently being overcome. Meanwhile numbers of men past the military age or unable to enlist for other reasons were serving as special constables or organising themselves into bodies of auxiliary troops. There were signs that Italy and Roumania might soon be fighting on the side of the Allies in order to share in the heritage of the tottering Dual Monarchy; the sympathy of the great mass of the neutral nations was estranged from Germany, and the complaints of British interference with their trade were not regarded as giving ground for apprehending serious friction, even in the case of the American Note (post, For. Hist., Chap. VII.). At home, serious crime had become rare, and the economic outlook was unexpectedly hopeful. The sufferings predicted by Sir Edward Grey (p. [171]) had not as yet been experienced; and unemployment, owing to the demands set up by the provision of the new Armies, was far less than it had commonly been in time of peace. It was seriously felt only in the cotton trade, in a few luxury trades, and in some of the fishing ports, owing to the interruption caused by the war and the loss of the German market for herrings. Pauperism in England and Wales had risen rapidly at the outset of the war; it had subsequently declined to a point only a little above the exceptionally low figures of a year earlier; in London it was actually below them. Doubtless this temporary prosperity was mainly due to an essentially unproductive consumption which would bring its own penalties; but it seemed probable that some compensation might be found for war losses in the capture of certain branches of German trade. A movement for the production in Great Britain of goods for which British consumers had hitherto been dependent on German or Austrian industry had been favoured by the Patents and Designs Act, through which British consumers were enabled to ignore the patent rights of alien enemies, and was energetically aided by the Board of Trade, which collected and supplied the fullest possible information as to the means of carrying out the processes, and providing the components, which had hitherto been left to German or Austrian industry alone. Business had begun to adapt itself to the new conditions, and the Stock Exchange was about to reopen. Finally, the Government had carried out a number of daring measures, which had collectively averted a colossal economic disaster. Some of these, notably its huge purchases of sugar and the subsequent prohibition of the importation of that commodity (Oct. 24, p. 243) in order to prevent the sale of the German surplus, were severely criticised by orthodox economists, and set up speculation as to the possibility of a complete change after the war in the financial and commercial policy of Great Britain. But as war measures they were generally received with acquiescence. On all grounds, therefore, the British nation felt itself entitled to look forward to the issue of the struggle with quiet confidence, and to possess its soul in patience until a vigorous offensive should become possible in the spring.