A Game Sustained

14 Cricket, war and the ethical dilemma There was also frustration within the military. In May 1915, an aide-de-camp to Sir John French (the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force at the start of the war) was typical in asking at a recruitment meeting, ‘How can you stop for an instant to think of racing, football, cricket, holidays or strikes, while victory hangs in the balance, and your mates are blown to bits?’ The following August, a prisoner of war held in Germany wrote to his brother that those who played and watched cricket ‘cannot have any idea what the Expeditionary Force has had to face’. He suggested that cricket grounds should be turned over to drill fields immediately. The soldier in question was Sergeant William Booth, brother of the President of the Bradford Cricket League, J.J.Booth. As the war failed to end quickly, the voices calling for frivolity to cease grew in strength. A correspondent to the Sheffield Independent in January 1916, for example, wrote: What is most needed now is to close all drink shops, gambling dens, picture houses, theatres, music halls and other pleasure resorts, including football and cricket grounds; yes and golf links, until the war is over, and thus let our enemies, one and all see that John Bull has got his coat off and means business. 15 Some were adamant that others simply had their priorities wrong. When asked about prospects for the coming 1917 season, a club official in the Doncaster area told a reporter firmly, ‘Let’s get the war over first before we think about cricket.’ Even one who made his living from watching the game – the journalist J.H.Stainton – pondered in 1917 whether the same pleasure would be derived from ‘the cricket prowess of those fit men who have spent the past few years in making munitions as over those who have stood in the gates of Hell for us.’ A second response to the dilemma was that playing cricket in wartime was acceptable, as long as it was not taken seriously. Hence any matches should be friendlies or should be in support of the numerous war charities which sprang