Tangible Patriotism during the First World War: Individuals and the Nation in British Propaganda

Abstract

This article explores several propaganda campaigns aimed at British civilians during 1917. Through examples from campaigns for War Savings, Food Economy and National Service, it argues that propaganda in this crisis year was as much about identifying small, tangible, contributions that individuals could make to the war effort as about more sensational accounts of enemy wrongdoing. Propagandists targeted all sections of society, offering children and some women new status through war work, promoting attractive working conditions for others, and reminding the wealthy of the social responsibilities that their greater economic freedom carried in wartime. The article suggests that the consensual, voluntarist approaches promoted during 1917 remained an important precursor to possible forms of compulsion.

Keywords:

• First World War
• Britain
• propaganda
• patriotism
• women
• children
• voluntarism

ORCID

David Monger http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1054-2834

Notes

1 ‘Patriotic Pence’, War Savings, no. 5 (Jan. 1917), 43. A full run of the journal is held at The National Archives: Public Record Office, Kew (henceforth TNA: PRO), NSC3/1. The play was published as Mrs H. Porter, Patriotic Pence, or, the Home Fairy: a Musical War Savings Play for Young People, with words and music by G. Bidder and Mrs W. Devenish (London: Evans Bros., n.d. [1917]). A copy is held at the British Library.

2 ‘School Notes’, Caldicott School Magazine, Vol. 1, no. 3, Christmas number 1918, 28: http://www.caldicott.com/magazinechristmas1918.aspx [accessed 14 Dec 2016].

3 ‘School Concert’, Mount Ida Chronicle, 28 Dec. 1917, 3.

4 ‘Peace Celebrations’, Mount Ida Chronicle, 1 Aug. 1919, 4. On the 1919 Peace Day events in New Zealand, see Imelda Bargas, ‘Endurance, Ephemerality and New Zealand’s 1919 Peace Celebrations’, in Endurance and the First World War: Experiences and Legacies in New Zealand and Australia, ed. by David Monger, Sarah Murray and Katie Pickles (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2014).

5 ‘East State School. Successful Children’s Concert’, Darling Downs Gazette, 17 June 1918, 4; ‘Scots Sabbath School’, Heidelberg News, and Greensborough, Eltham and Diamond Creek Chronicle, 26 October 1918, 2, reported that the play was ‘received with much favour’.

6 S. Bennett, Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception (2nd ed., London: Routledge, 1997), 139.

7 Bennett, 49.

8 J. Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2nd. ed., New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 174–5.

9 P. Ward, ‘Empire and the Everyday: Britishness and Imperialism in Women’s Lives in the Great War in Rediscovering the British World ed. by Philip Bruckner and Simon Francis (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005); K. Good, ‘England Goes to War, 1914–1915’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Liverpool, 2002); D. Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War Britain: the National War Aims Committee and Civilian Morale (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012); D. Monger, ‘Familiarity Breeds Consent? Patriotic Rituals in British First World war Propaganda’, Twentieth Century British History, 26:4 (2015).

10 P. Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). For extended accounts of propaganda, ‘big ideas’ and sensationalism: C. Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the First World War (London: Allen Lane, 1977); M.L. Sanders and P.M. Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, 1914–1918 (London: MacMillan, 1982; N.F. Gullace, ‘The Blood of Our Sons’: Men, Women and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship during World War One (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002).

11 For an excellent survey of civilisation vs barbarism: S. Audoin-Rouzeau and A. Becker, 1914–1918: Understanding the Great War, trans. Catherine Temerson (London: Profile, 2002).

12 Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda, chapter 1. For the wider development of Britain’s propaganda apparatus throughout the war: Sanders and Taylor, chapters 1–2.

13 On remobilisation: J. Horne, ‘Remobilizing for “Total War”: France and Britain, 1917–1918’, in State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War, ed. by John Horne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

14 War Savings, no. 7 (Mar. 1917), 62.

15 See Food economy leaflet ‘Rational Service’, based on L. Raven Hill cartoon for Punch, TNA: PRO, NSC7/37, Food Control campaign folder. According to the Food Economy Campaign Report of 14 Sep. 1917, in the same file, 2 million copies of this leaflet were distributed.

16 ‘Food Consumption. Statement by Lord Devonport.’, The Times, 23 March 1917, 8; see also War Savings, no. 8–9 (Apr.–May 1917), 74.

17 On the significance of sacrifice, especially servicemen’s sacrifice:, J. Horne, ‘“L’impôt du sang”: Republican Rhetoric and Industrial Warfare in France, 1914–1918’, Social History, 14:2 (1989); A. J. Frantzen, Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice and the Great War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); A. Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda, especially chapter 7.

18 For the number of local War Savings Committees: TNA PRO NSC7/37, NWSC circular letter on Food Campaign signed by Robert Kindersley, 29 Mar. 1917.

19 TNA PRO NSC7/37, circular letter on Food Campaign, 10 Mar. 1917.

20 Mrs [Maud] Pember Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1913). For a brief account of Reeves’ life, including her wartime work: R. Fry, Maud & Amber: A New Zealand Mother and Daughter and the Women’s Cause, 1865–1981 (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 1992), especially 78–9. J. Woods, Diplomatic Ladies: New Zealand’s Unsung Envoys (Dunedin: Otago University press, 2013), chapter 1, does not discuss Reeves’ wartime career. For the full members of the Joint Committee: TNA PRO NSC7/37, list dated 7 Apr. 1917.

21 C. S. [Dorothy] Peel, How We Lived Then: A Sketch of Social and Domestic Life in England During the War (London: John Lane, 1929), 79.

22 See, e.g., ‘Social Gossip’, Free Lance, 5 April 1917, 16; ‘Food Control’, Auckland Star, 11 April 1917, 8; ‘Mrs Pember Reeves’, Evening Post, 28 Apr. 1917, 7; ‘“Alien’s” Letter from England’, Otago Witness, 9 May 1917, 51.

23 C. S. [Dorothy] Peel, A Year in Public Life (London: Constable, 1919), 17.

24 For discussion of other aspects of food propaganda, especially film propaganda: S. Hockenhull, ‘Everybody’s Business: Film, Food and Victory in the First World War’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 35:4 (2015).

25 TNA PRO NSC7/37, Theodore Chambers, ‘Food Economy Campaign: Report’, 14 Sep. 1917, 3–4.

26 Peel, How We Lived, 78; Peel, Year in Public, 23-4.

27 TNA PRO NSC7/37, ‘Notes of Meeting of the Food Campaign Joint Committee’, 20 June 1917.

28 Miss [M.E.] Bibby, Miss [E.G.] Colles, Miss [Florence] Petty and the late Dr. [J.F.G.] Sykes, The Pudding Lady: A New Departure in Social Work (new ed., Westminster: National Food Reform Association, 1916); E. Ross, Slum Travelers: Ladies and London Poverty, 1860–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 192.

29 Epigraph preceding chapter on ‘War Ration Housekeeping’ from the 1918 edition of the Eat-Less-Meat Book: War Ration Cookery, first published 1917 (London: John Lane, 1918), 12.

30 The Queen, cited in ‘Notes for Women’, New Zealand Times, 10 Jul. 1917, 9.

31 C. Playne, Britain Holds On, 1917, 1918 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1933), 68; Peel, How We Lived, 90.

32 ‘Masticate, masticate, masticate’, War Savings, no. 8-9, Apr.–May 1917, 81.

33 ‘The Food Economy Campaign: Within and Without’, in ibid., 81.

34 TNA PRO NSC7/37, Food Campaign Joint Committee meeting, 11 May 1917—the switch from badges to ribbons is discussed here, and a sample is attached. For earlier discussion, see the meeting of 2 May in the same file.

35 Good, 52.

36 GMK and T. Smith, ‘Wear the Purple Ribbon’, and D. Stuart and R. Black, ‘Each Loaf Saved Drives a Big Long Nail’, leaflet/score distributed by the NWSC, in TNA PRO NSC7/37.

37 L. Lewis Shiman, Crusade Against Drink in Victorian England (Houndmills: MacMillan Press, 1988), 109–21; quotations at 121. I am grateful to audience members at the University of Canterbury History Department Research Seminar and the Myriad Faces of War symposium in Wellington for highlighting this connection.

38 On the political headway made by Tories in working-class seats by condemning ‘faddist’ Liberal enthusiasm for temperance: Jon Lawrence, ‘Class and Gender in the Making of Urban Toryism, 1880–1914’, English Historical Review, 108:428 (1993).

39 War Savings, no. 7 (March 1917), 68.

40 TNA PRO NSC7/37, ‘Notes of Meeting of the Food Campaign Joint Committee’, 20 Jun. 1917.

41 R. Chickering, The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 500.

42 Chickering, 501–11.

43 B. Blades, Roll of Honour: Schooling and the Great War (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2015), 42, 43, 53–5. For discussion of children’s education and the war: R. Kennedy, The Children’s War: Britain, 1914–1918 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), especially chapter 5.

44 For some discussion, see Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda, chapter 3.

45 Kennedy, 105, 116, 145.

46 Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda, 254–5; Monger, ‘Familiarity Breeds Consent’, 516.

47 For the joint committee’s own assessment of the value of this: TNA PRO NSC7/37, ‘Food Economy Campaign Report’, 6-7. Pledge cards and calls for food thrift targeted at children and publicised through schools were also a feature of US propaganda in 1917–18: R.N. Gross, ‘“Lick a Stamp, Lick the Kaiser”: Sensing the Federal Government in Children’s Lives during World War I’, Journal of Social History, 46: 4 (2013).

48 E. Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), 130, 135–6.

49 Kennedy, 124-5.

50 D. Gleeson, ‘School attendance and truancy: a socio-historical account’, Sociological Review, 40:3 (1992), 462; S. Auerbach, ‘“Some Punishment Should be Devised”: Parents, Children, and the State in Victorian London’, The Historian, 71:4 (2009); Blades, 55–7.

51 Rose, 174. For fuller discussion of Elizabeth Flint’s wartime school career: E. Flint, Hot Bread and Chips (London: Museum Press, 1963), 98–99, 108–11, 140–4, 160–3.

52 Flint, 143.

53 Peel, Year in Public Life, 42–3.

54 Ways in Which Bread and Flour are Wasted (Ministry of Food leaflet, 1917), reproduced in Human Documents of the Lloyd George Era, ed. by E. Royston Pike (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972), 212–3.

55 ‘The Food Economy Campaign: Within and Without’, War Savings, no. 8-9, Apr.–May 1917, 81.

56 Peel, Year in Public Life, 42–3.

57 Blades, 54.

58 Cited in L.M. Bennett, British Food Policy During the First World War (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985), 142–3.

59 T. Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), 534–5, 538–40.

60 TNA:PRO NATS1/286, National Service Department, Women’s Section, notice sent to morning papers and news agencies, 11 May 1917. The notice, slightly altered from the Department’s text, appeared the next day in ‘Wool Gathering for Children’, The Times, 12 May 1917, 3.

61 TNA PRO NATS1/1286, notice for press, 11 May 1917.

62 Gregory, especially 142-50.

63 J.N. Horne, Labour at War: France and Britain, 1914–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 266. On the idea of a ‘moral economy’: B. Waites, A Class Society at War: England, 1914–1918 (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1987).

64 Gregory, 150.

65 TNA PRO NATS1/1286, notice for press, 20 Jun. 1917.

66 For the varying motivations of different groups of women workers: J.S.K. Watson, Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory, and the First World War in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), chapter 1.

67 On the attractions of uniformed work: S. Grayzel, ‘The Outward and Visible Sign of Her Patriotism: Women, Uniforms and National Service During the First World War’, Twentieth Century British History, 8:2 (1997); L. Noakes, ‘Playing at Being Soldiers: British women and military uniform in the First World War’, in British Popular Culture and the First World War, ed. by Jessica Meyer, (Leiden: Brill, 2008); L. Ugolini, ‘The Illicit Consumption of Military Uniforms in Britain, 1914–1918, Journal of Design History, 24:2 (2011).

68 TNA PRO NATS1/109, draft National Service poster. Unlike many of the other posters noted in this paper, no trace of this poster in a finished form has been found either in the assortment of posters held in the NATS files of the National Archives, or in the Imperial War Museum’s Collections Online database.

69 TNA PRO NATS1/109, ‘4,000 Women Wanted for Fruit Picking from the end of July to Mid-September in the Blairgowrie and Auchterarder districts’. This is one of several posters, many of them locally-targeted, contained in this file.

70 Monger, ‘Familiarity Breeds Consent?’

71 TNA PRO NATS1/1286, Grace Curnock, notice to Sunday papers, 20 Jul. 1917.

72 ‘Our Women of Today: Bishop Stortford’s Farming Competition’, British Pathé film, undated (1914–1918), film ID 1872.35: http://www.britishpathe.com/video/our-women-of-today-bishops-stortford-farming-compe/query/bishops+stortford [accessed 20 Apr. 2017].

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Notes on contributors

David Monger

David Monger is Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He has written several studies of British domestic propaganda during the First World War, including Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War Britain: the National War Aims Committee and Civilian Morale (Liverpool, 2012) and several articles and chapters on the messages and performance rituals of propaganda as well as material directed towards women and servicemen. He is also the editor (with Sarah Murray and Katie Pickles) of Endurance and the First World War: Experiences and Legacies in New Zealand and Australia (Newcastle, 2014).