Putting the moral into morale: YMCA cinemas on the Western Front, 1914–1918

Abstract

This article will focus on the wartime cinema facilities provided by the philanthropic association the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the YMCA turned its attention to supporting troops fighting for Britain and her Empire. YMCA huts were built to provide soldiers with food and a place to rest on the frontline, or at home in military camps and railway stations. Alongside the arrangements for entertainments made by the Army at Divisional level, the YMCA had a central role in providing morale-boosting entertainment and moral-strengthening education to British soldiers. Films became a central mode of entertainment for British servicemen serving on the Western Front and the Mediterranean. Cinema shows were the most popular part of the concert party programme, with many cinema halls also acting as theatres. The YMCA had 77 cinema plants, the majority of which were portable units providing free showings to men in forward positions. There were 20 specially constructed cinema theatres in principal Base Camps, each with a capacity of up to 1500 men, and towards the end of the war, the organisation estimated that it had shown films to 35,000 men for every night of the conflict. This article will show how valuable the medium of film became to the British Army in terms of morale and discipline. An effective ‘counter-attraction’ to less wholesome forms of recreation, the cinema was an essential element of wartime life for British troops serving in the First World War.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections, University of Birmingham: YMCA 1914–1919: The YMCA in France & Flanders, 17.

2. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Report by the YMCA Secretary of the Third Army Area, unnamed and undated.

3. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Letter from Sir Douglas Haig, April 2, 1919, in YMCA 1914–1919: The YMCA in France & Flanders, 1.

4. Margaret Leask, Lena Ashwell: Actress, Patriot, Pioneer, (Hertford: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2013); Jeffrey S. Reznick, Healing the Nation: Soldiers and the Culture of Caregiving during the Great War (Manchester: MUP, 2011); Michael Snape, ed., The Back Parts of War: The YMCA Memoirs and Letters of Barclay Baron, 1915–1919 (London: Boydell & Brewer, 2009).

5. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Report of the YMCA Work in the Third Army Area (Havre), February 12, 1917, 3.

6. However, the role of sport, entertainment and education has not featured in any of the principal works on the subject of military morale, for example Gary Sheffield, Command and Morale: The British Army on the Western Front, 1914–1918, (London: Pen & Sword, 2014).

7. J.F. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 1914–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 1.

8. Ibid., 1, echoing J.B. Priestley, Margin Released (1962), 130–7, and R.H. Mottram in 1969.

9. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 1914–1918, 81.

10. Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (London: Harper, 2005), 555.

11. Arthur Yapp and F.A. McKenzie quoted in The Back Parts of War, ed. Snape, 20 and 21.

12. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Report by L.G. Pilkington, Le Havre, December 31, 1915.

13. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: ‘The Red Triangle in a Rest Camp’, R.H. Miller (Calais) n.d., 2.

14. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Report of the YMCA Work in the Third Army Area (Havre), February 12, 1917, 3.

15. YMCA, ‘Cadbury Special Collections: Have You Given Your New Hat?: A Suggestion by Miss Lena Ashwell’, The YM, June 30, 1916, 602.

16. See Margaret Leask’s biography of Lena Ashwell and Ashwell’s own account of her wartime work Lena Ashwell, Modern Troubadours (London: Gyldendal, 1922).

17. Nicholas Hiley, ‘The British Cinema Auditorium’, in Film and the First World War, ed. Karel Dibbets and Bert Hogenkamp (Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 1995), 160–170.

18. ‘On the Screen’, Illustrated Films Monthly, January 1914, 250.

19. Michael Hammond, The Big Show: British Cinema Culture in the Great War 1914–1918 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006), 2–3.

20. The Wipers Times, February 12, 1916, 2.

21. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Report of the YMCA Work in the Third Army Area (Havre), February 12, 1917, 2.

22. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Report by the YMCA Secretary of the Third Army Area, unnamed and undated.

23. Ibid.

24. Oliver McCowen, ‘The Winter Push’ quoted in The Back Parts of War, ed. Snape, 48.

25. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: A.K. Yapp, The YMCA in France & Flanders, Spring 1916, 22.

26. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Memorandum Re Newly Allotted Huts in France, April 6, 1916.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Report of the YMCA Work in the Third Army Area (Havre), February 12, 1917, 3.

31. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Gordon Williams, YMCA Salonika, February 18, 1917.

32. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Gordon Williams, YMCA, Salonika, March 24, 1918.

33. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: ‘The Red Triangle at the Front’, May 19, 1916, 444.

34. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: YM, November 3, 1916, 1023.

35. Kristin Thompson, Exporting Entertainment: America in the World Film Market 1907–34 (London: British Film Institute, 1985), ix–x.

36. I am grateful to Dr Michael Hammond for his suggestions in relation to the subject of film supplies to the Western Front.

37. ‘Cinema Influences’, The Times, January 16, 1917, 5.

38. Thompson, Exporting Entertainment, 97.

39. George Creel, How We Advertised America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920), 293–4.

40. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Major-General A.A. Chichester, 2nd Army HQ, to Oliver McCowen, March 1, 1916.

41. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Report on the work of the YMCA in the Second Army Area, August 12, 1916.

42. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: ‘The Cinema’, The Red Triangle, vol. 1, September 1917–August 1918, 85.

43. ‘Future of the Cinema’, The Times, December 15, 1917, 3.

44. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: ‘The Cinema’, The Red Triangle, vol. 1, September 1917–August 1918, 85.

45. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: ‘The YMCA at the Front: Lure of the Drink’, Special Correspondent [n.d.].

46. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Oliver McCowen to Arthur Yapp, September 18, 1916.

47. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Oliver McCowen to E.C. Carter (National Council YMCA, India and Ceylon) November 3, 1916.

48. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: Report from Oliver McCowen for Arthur Yapp, dated 24 February 1916.

49. YMCA, Cadbury Special Collections: YMCA Yearbook, vol. 5, YMCA E21, 1919–1921, 1921 – report of the War Emergency Work of the Association from 1914 to 1920, 7.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.