All Quiet on the Home Front

foodstuffs briefly spiralled, the price of bread nearly doubling.

On 9 August, the Tottenham and Edmonton Herald reported the case of a lady who walked into a grocer’s store in Palmers Green and spent the huge sum of £17. So effectively did she empty the shelves that it was forced to close for three days until new supplies could be obtained.
As a result of such panic buying, wholesale prices rose quickly. The Hull Daily Mail reported that in Grimsby the price of wholesale flour had risen from 27 to 40 shillings per 20-stone sack. Invariably such rises hit the shops, and prices of staple

The defeat of Germany was expected by Christmas, but in the meantime certain people on the home front took precautions, just in case. At the start of hostilities there had been a rush to stock up on food, with those who could afford it buying large quantities of non-perishables, in particular sugar and tinned foods.

In reality, there were a myriad reasons for enlisting. Everyone had their own: many were tempted by friends, others just followed the works crowd down to the recruiting office. Some were bored, sick of repetitive

jobs, others were ‘encouraged’ out of their employment and into the army. And then there were the 500,000 men made redundant in the weeks after war broke out as industries shed employees in the face of economic uncertainty.

Over-enthusiasm to play a part explains why many young men were enlisted, but by no means all. Some men simply spoiled for a fight, or felt the war gave them a chance for redemption. One interesting case is that of Arthur Borton, an upper-middle-class boy educated at Eton. He had proved to be nothing other than a failure in civilian life, losing money hand-over-fist in misguided business ventures. His family despaired. The outbreak of war offered him a final chance to prove his worth. Over the following four years, he turned out to be a consummate soldier, winning the Victoria Cross and the Distinguished Service Order for bravery, only to lose his way again once the war was over and he was demobbed.

Over-enthusiasm to play a part explains why many young men were enlisted, but by no means all. Some men simply spoiled for a fight, or felt the war gave them a chance for redemption. One interesting case is that of Arthur Borton, an upper-middle-class boy educated at Eton. He had proved to be nothing other than a failure in civilian life, losing money hand-over-fist in misguided business ventures. His family despaired. The outbreak of war offered him a final chance to prove his worth. Over the following four years, he turned out to be a consummate soldier, winning the Victoria Cross and the Distinguished Service Order for bravery, only to lose his way again once the war was over and he was demobbed. Arthur’s case was clearly exceptional in terms of the awards he won, although many civilians who were turned into soldiers probably identified with his story.

Britain’s small, highly trained regular army was no match in terms of numbers for the huge German forces which, within a week of mobilisation, had 3.8 million men under arms. Kitchener foresaw that a new citizens’ army would be required, made up of volunteers.
In times of war, the government had envisaged that the regular and Territorial armies would simply grow organically, taking on new recruits and expanding as required. Lord Kitchener, who had little enough faith in the prowess of the new Territorial Force formed in 1908 with part-time soldiers, originally meant for home defence), decided to discard the idea and, as the new Secretary of State for War, create an entirely New Army of 100,000 men. However, such was the apparent enthusiasm to fight that some 300,000 civilians enlisted in August, before word ever got out that this New Amy was needed. Then, when Kitchener launched his famous appeal, epitomised by the poster ‘Your Country Needs You’, there came a second, spontaneous response, hundreds of thousands of men besieging recruiting stations set up right across the country.

‘I believe we’re fighting for an ethical truth, and that the war is a struggle between civilisation, and all it stands for, on one side, against Germany’s barbarism, which seems the result of their extraordinary rapid and material progress of the last forty years, which isn’t based on a solid civilisation.’

the British public had little doubt that the Germans were responsible for the war, that Britain’s hand had been forced.