Dimming of the Day

10 Foreword men and supplies were the chief accessories of the coming years long and bloody stalemate. By now it was well into September with the cricket season moving into the shadows. Slowly the sobering penny was beginning to drop. Much was made in the newspapers of the atrocities committed by the German army against the civilian population of Belgium. Unhappily, there was not much need for hyperbole. Belgian refugees were by now flooding into Britain. Suddenly the casualty lists began to lengthen ominously. By the end of the month half the BEF had been killed or wounded. The Fall of Antwerp on 10 October and the first Battle of Ypres (20 October to 22 November) – note the length of time that first-ever ‘trench’ battle took – were the first indicators that every prediction about the style and most predictions about the duration of the war had been proved false. One can trace the growing realisation of this tragic outcome back in Britain. The Sportsman of 27 August carried just about W.G.Grace’s only intervention in political affairs, with his letter calling on ‘all first-class cricketers of suitable age’ to enlist and for county cricket to be halted ‘for it is not fitting that at a time like the present that able-bodied men should play day after day and pleasure-seekers look on.’ Simon Rae, Grace’s most complete and thoughtful biographer, does comment that a further round of the county championship was played despite its publication and, of course, the letter was directed at first-class spectator cricket not club cricket. Lord Roberts made a stirring speech which included a reference to ‘people who went on playing cricket at this time’, while Archie MacLaren used the pages of The World of Cricket , the magazine he professed to edit, to describe Kaiser Wilhelm as ‘that hog in armour’ and ‘that crowned madman’. Nonetheless, the descent into what Benny Green described as ‘hysterical idiocy’ did take some time to occur. For example, it was October before MacLaren enlisted as a lieutenant in the Army Service Corps and, usually in company with Captain G.L.Jessop, engaged in a three-year stint as a recruiting officer. It was only at the end of August that Kitchener persuaded the cabinet, still very much opposed to compulsion, that he must raise a ‘New Army’ of seventy divisions, a huge advance on the basic seven that formed the BEF. This was the start of the ‘Kitchener wants You’ campaign. It was remarkably successful. He asked for an initial 200,000 – the first week in September alone attracted 115,000; the figure was 750,000 by the end of that month, and the spate of recruits continued at an average of 125,000 per month until the June of 1915: 2.5 million men had volunteered by March 1916 when conscription had finally to be introduced, which is extremely impressive; it was 25% of those eligible. That does, of course, mean that 75% did not volunteer whereas there is a vague legendary belief that every young man rushed to the colours. But it is still a massive army of purely volunteers. It is true that there were social pressures – the financial turmoil increased the rate of unemployment abruptly, the recruitment techniques were wondrously productive; female and peer-group pressure was intense, whilst as at every juncture since the