Abstract
In December 1868 Macmillan’s Magazine described for its readers the manifestations of ‘Prussian militarism’ that had been established in the Rhineland over the previous half-century:
You see in the most retired villages — places which seem the very ideal of pastoral tranquillity — the well-known inscription on the first and last house announcing the company and regiment of the Landwehr for which the villagers are recruited, and the military law is everywhere rigidly executed and submissively obeyed.1
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Notes
C. Barnett, Britain and her Army, 1509–1970: A Military, Political and Social Survey (London, 1970) p. 257; Bond, War and Society in Europe, p. 32; Friedberg, The Weary Titan, pp. 221–2.
G. F. Shee, The Briton’s First Duty: The Case for Conscription (London, 1901), p. 175.
T. W. L. Newton, Retrospection (London, 1941), pp. 115–6.
C. P. Trevelyan, Democracy and Compulsory Service (London, 1913).
J. A. Farrer, Liberalism and the National Service League (London, 1911), pp. 7–19, 50–1, 93–4.
J. B. Glasier, The Peril of Conscription (London, 1915), p. 4.
D. Hayes, Conscription Conflict: The Conflict of Ideas in the Struggle for and against Military Conscription in Britain between the years 1901 and 1939 (London, 1949), p. 39.
R. J. Q. Adams and P. P. Poirier, The Conscription Controversy in Great Britain, 1900–18 (Ohio, 1987), pp. 11, 17, 21.
G. Q. Flynn, Conscription and Democracy: The Draft in France, Great Britain and the United States (London, 2002), pp. 14.
Even after the formation of the National Service League (NSL), many of these tracts were of a highly individualistic and independent-minded nature, and frequently advanced schemes for conscription which differed from the official programme of the League. See, for example, Maj. S. L. Murray, The Electors of Great Britain and the Defence of the Country (1900), and The Future Peace of the Anglo-Saxons (1905);
Lt.-Col. T. Innes, The Second Line: A Letter Addressed to Commanding Officers of Militia (1905);
Maj. J. H. Sandham Griffith, Britain Requires Every Man to do his Duty (1905);
Capt. D. I. Macaulay, An Imperial Military System (1909);
Col. Lonsdale Hale, The Horrors of War in Great Britain (1910); ‘Fidelis’, England’s Peril (1911);
Capt. A. F. U. Green, The Shadow of the Sword (1914).
R. B. Haldane, Before the War (London, 1920), p. 175.
H. Strachan, ‘The British Army, its General Staff and the Continental Commitment, 1904–14’, in French and Reid (eds), The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, pp. 84, 92; N. d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy: Defence Administration in Peacetime Britain, 1902–1914 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 147–8.
Minutes of evidence taken before the Royal Commission on the Militia and Volunteers, Cd. 2062–3, i, p. 88; Hansard, 1913, lii, 2027; R. Holmes, The Little Field Marshal: Sir John French (London, 1981), pp. 131, 144; I. F. W. Beckett, ‘Selection by Disparagement: Lord Esher, the General Staff and the Politics of Command, 1904–14’, in French and Reid (eds) The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, p. 50.
D. Cooper, Haig (2 vols, London, 1936), i, pp. 116–17;
J. Marshall-Cornwall, Haig as Military Commander (London, 1973), p. 76;
E. K. G. Sixsmith, Douglas Haig (London, 1976), p. 55; Strachan, Politics of the British Army, pp. 110–11.
I. S. M. Hamilton, Compulsory Service: A Study of the Question in the Light of Experience (London, 1910), pp. 121–4, 147.
These men were Tennant, J. D. Rees, H. F. B. Lynch, and H. G. Beaumont. Hansard, 1908, cxci, 1482–6.
M. Pugh, Speak for Britain! A New History of the Labour Party (London, 2010), pp. 18–30; Ward, Red Flag and Union Jack, pp. 23–9, 60–2, 106–13.
G. G. Coulton, True Liberalism and Compulsory Service (London, 1914), pp. 12, 17.
Nation in Arms, July 1911, p. 344; Christmas 1913, p. 463; G. G. Coulton, A Strong Army in a Free State: A Study of the Old English and Modern Swiss Militias (London, 1900), pp. 19–41.
F. Madden and D. Fieldhouse (eds), Settler Self-government, 1840–1900; The Development of Representative and Responsible Government. Select Documents on the Constitutional History of the British Empire and Commonwealth (London, 1990), p. 76.
J. E. B. Seely, Adventure (London, 1930), pp. 92–93.
House of Lords Record Office (HLRO), Lloyd George papers, G/46/3/81; For a chronology of the events surrounding the conference and the proposal for a coalition, see J. Grigg, Lloyd George: The People’s Champion, 1902–11, 2nd edn. (London, 1991), pp. 243–76.
Grigg’s reproduction of the August memorandum in his appendix is, however, incomplete. The full text both of this document, and of the ‘Supplementary Memorandum’ of 29 October can be found in R. J. Scally, The Origins of the Lloyd George Coalition: The Politics of Social-Imperialism, 1900–1918 (Princeton, 1975), pp. 375–86.
D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, New edn (2 vols, London, 1938) i, pp. 21–2.
B. B. Gilbert, Lloyd George: A Political Life (2 vols, London, 1987), i, pp. 412–21.
J. Turner, British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict, 1915–1918 (London, 1992), p. 50.
A. Chamberlain, Politics from Inside: An Epistolary Chronicle (London, 1936), p. 359.
G. A. Riddell, More Pages from my Diary, 1908–1914 (London, 1934), p. 94;
K. O. Morgan. Riddell, More Pages from my Diary, 1908–1914 (London, 1934), p. 94;
K. O. Morgan, ‘Lloyd George and Germany’, Historical Journal, vol. 39, no. 3 (1996), pp. 755–66.
E. David (ed.), Inside Asquith’s Cabinet: From the Diaries of Charles Hobhouse (London, 1977), p. 134. A private member’s bill proposing compulsory Territorial training had been introduced into the Commons on 11 April, but was talked out without a division being called. Among the bill’s sponsors was Sir Charles Rose, the Liberal MP for Newmarket. See Hansard, 5th Series, 1913, li., 1546–7.
J. Morley, The Struggle for National Education (London, 1873), p. 139.
L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (London, 1911), p. 147.
J. S. Mill, On liberty (London, 1859), p. 24.
F. S. Roberts, Fallacies and Facts: An Answer to ‘Compulsory Service’ (London, 1911), pp. 197–9. Cramb’s contribution to this work was prepared anonymously. See Allison, The National Service Issue, p. 180.
H. Strachan, ‘Liberalism and Conscription, 1789–1919’, in H. Strachan, ed., The British Army, Manpower and Society into the Twenty-first Century (London, 2000), p. 5.
T. C. Horsfall, National Service and the Welfare of the Community (London, 1906), p. 39.
L. Dickey, ‘Power, Commerce, and Natural Law in Daniel Defoe’s Political Writings, 1698–1707’, in J. Robertson (ed.) A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 71.
See J. Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue (Edinburgh, 1985).
J. Cartwright, The English Constitution Produced and Illustrated (London, 1823), pp. 85–6, 222.
F. P. F. Vane, Agin the Governments: Memoirs and Adventures of Sir Francis Fletcher Vane (London, 1929), pp. 37–8.
J. Joll, The Second International, 1889–1914, rev. ed. (London, 1974), pp. 112–4.
G. Johnson, Social Democratic Politics in Britain, 1881–1911 (New York, 2002), pp. 127–30.
H. Quelch, ‘Socialism and Soldiering’, Social Democrat, vol. XI, no. 10 (October, 1907), pp. 584–5.
M. Hendley, ‘“Help us to Secure a Strong, Healthy, Prosperous and Peaceful Britain”: The Social Arguments for Compulsory Service in Britain, 1899–1914’, Canadian Journal of History, vol. 30, no. 2 (1995), pp. 261–88, at p. 287.
H. Quelch, ‘Socialism, Militarism, and Mr Haldane’s Scheme’, Social Democrat, vol. XI, no. 4 (April, 1907), p. 207.
K. Morgan, ‘British Guild Socialists and the Exemplar of the Panama Canal’, History of Political Thought, vol. 28, no. 1 (2007), pp. 120–57, at p. 140.
R. McKibbin, ‘Social Classes and Social Observation in Edwardian England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 28 (1978), pp. 175–99;
J. Harris, ‘The Transition to High Politics in English Social Policy, 1880–1914’, in M. Bentley and J. Stevenson (eds), High and Low Politics in Modern Britain: Ten Studies (Oxford, 1983), pp. 58–79;
K. Bales, ‘Charles Booth’s Survey of Life and Labour of the People of London 1889–1903’, in M. Bulmer, K. Bales, and K. H. Sklar (eds), The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880–1940 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 66–110.
T. C. Horsfall, The Influence on National Life of Military Training in Schools (London, 1906), p. 7. See also Horsfall’s address to the Medical Officers of Schools Association in February 1906, published in The Influence on National Life of Military Training in Schools. As Treasurer of the Macclesfield and District Patriotic Association, Horsfall was active in a body which was involved in the drilling of some 3000 children; See Times, 31 October 1902.
E. George, National Service and National Education (London, 1913), pp. 23–39.
See M. Freeden, ‘Eugenics and Progressive Thought: A Study in Ideological Affinity’, Historical Journal, vol. 22, no. 3 (Sept., 1979), pp. 645–71.
H. Elliot (ed.), The Letters of John Stuart Mill (2 vols, London, 1910), ii, p. 291. Part of this letter was quoted by the League in the Nation in Arms, September 1911, p. 464.
H. Quelch, ‘Socialism, Militarism, and Mr Haldane’s Scheme’, Social Democrat, vol. XI, no. 4 (April, 1907), p. 204.
M. V. Brett (ed.), Journals and Letters of Reginald Viscount Esher (4 vols, London, 1934–38), ii, p. 391.
P. J. Waller, Writers, Readers, and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain, 1870–1918 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 896–8. Meredith joined the NSL in 1903. Following his death in May 1909, the Nation in Arms paid tribute to ‘this fearless, forthright Liberal of the old school’, and lamented the loss of ‘the most brilliant and far-sighted supporter of the principles for the establishment of which the League was founded’. Among the wreaths laid on the poet’s tomb was one from the NSL, dedicated ‘to one of its earliest and most distinguished supporters’. Nation in Arms, June 1909, p. 221.
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Johnson, M. (2013). The Militarization of Society: Compulsory Service, the National Service League, and Progressive Politics. In: Militarism and the British Left, 1902–1914. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137274137_5
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