Dimming of the Day

43 June 1914 ambassadors from everywhere. For once it would seem that security had been tight enough to keep the suffragettes out (many of them were well- brought-up girls who had been presented at court in their time). It was beginning to be possible to keep an eye on the Championship and Surrey were unceremoniously thumped by Essex at the Oval. Johnny Douglas with 74*, followed by 11 wickets in the match for 98, bowled unchanged through both innings with Bert Tremlin, a medium-pacer having his best season at the age of 37: he carried on for a year or two after the war before becoming a first-class umpire. Middlesex, in a game starting a day later, were in a useful position against Warwickshire with a small first-innings lead, but on the next day Tarrant rampaged through Warwickshire’s batting on a wet but drying pitch to bowl them out for 69 and Middlesex needed only 27 to win. Middlesex now looked in a strong position, having won five games out of six. Michael Falcon, mostly of Norfolk, took 13 in the match for the Free Foresters against Cambridge University, though Cambridge in the end won by one wicket. MCC had written to the South African Cricket Association apologising for any apparent discourtesy that had been offered to the Mayor and citizens of Bloemfontein during the winter tour. The art of the grudging and minimal apology was already in place. On 11 June an argument about the place of the battleship in modern warfare was raging. Sir Percy Scott argued that submarines and aircraft were making the battleship redundant. Scott had retired from the Navy with the rank of Admiral in 1913. His ideas may have been premature, but battleships played very little part in the war when it came. Scott was well known as a maverick, but this idea was truly shocking as an absolute faith in the Royal Navy was essential to every true-born Englishman (and because the country had just spent and was still spending an enormous amount of money on battleships). On June a bomb went off in Westminster Abbey, causing some damage to the coronation chair. Two women who happened to be around were arrested but then released. On the same day the Manchester Guardian reported that in Portsmouth two suffragettes were chased by a brick- throwing mob and a meeting broken up in great disorder. The Times reported the inquest into the death of Miss Joan Lavender Guthrie: she had been a militant suffragette and had been in prison in 1912. After that she left home and went on the stage under the name of Laura Gray. She had become addicted to alcohol and drugs, went to night- clubs and was ‘leading an immoral life’. She was pregnant. The coroner ‘commented strongly on the effect of militancy on her ill-balanced mind.’ Somehow the assumptions about cause and effect summed up the mindset of the conservative part of middle-class England. At Lord’s on 11 June Middlesex were playing Yorkshire and had scored 170-5 when rain set in. Surrey on the same day completed a win over