Dimming of the Day

August 1914 innings, Major Booth (normally known to his fellows as William) taking nine wickets in the match. Booth took 141 wickets this year but it was his last: he was to die on the Somme. Hampshire beat Somerset by an innings, H.C.McDonell taking seven for 47 in the second innings, eleven for 104 in the match. Harold McDonell was an amateur leg-spinner who had played for Surrey a few years earlier. He now played for Hampshire, usually turning out in August (the 1911 census shows him as a schoolmaster at Twyford School near Winchester). Derbyshire bowled Leicestershire out for 56 and went on to win a game they had looked like losing. The captain for this match, Thomas Forrester, took four for 29 and James Horsley, who had switched from Nottinghamshire to Derbyshire (the county of his birth), six for 17. He went on playing for Derbyshire until 1925. On 21 August the papers reported the death of the Pope, Pius X, later canonised. Father Franz Xavier Wernz, the general of the Jesuit order, had died the day before. The Times had a correspondent touring the country, reporting on the state of things: today he was in the Midlands where he found the settled order of life affected only to a limited degree, suggesting that strikes in recent years had caused more disruption. The Belgian withdrawal from Brussels was explained as being merely tactical. There was an assurance that racing would resume at Doncaster and Wolverhampton. There were three county matches in progress and two scores given in full. Kent battered Worcestershire for 461, Woolley 150 not out and S.H.Day 109. Sam Day was an amateur who played until 1919 (by which time he was 41) and had played football for the Corinthians and England. Johnny Tyldesley scored another century as Lancashire totalled 372 against Sussex. In the other match Warwickshire made 288 against Hampshire, F.R.Foster making 92 in an hour and a half. The Times of 22 August, talking about events after the German capture of Brussels, rhapsodised about ‘a glorious country for fighting in, glorious weather and a glorious cause. What soldier could ask for more?’ The special correspondent in Boulogne was watching artillery moving towards the front, each hauled by eight horses ‘fresh from the English plough’ (in some cases not spared so willingly). In fact, battle in earnest was getting very close. From St Petersburg it was claimed that the Russian army had crossed the Prussian border with half a million men. With increasing enthusiasm the Daily Express suggested using the Press Gang to round up ‘loafers’. The Express claimed that other papers were spreading rumours that the paper was German-owned and said the Chairman and editor was not and never had been a German, that it was not printed on German paper and that there was not one German on the staff of the Express . 90