Boy Soldiers of the Great War (26 page)

As politicians turned their attention to the competing needs of the army and of industry, so Kitchener’s profound limitations as Secretary of State for War, especially his inability to delegate,
became apparent and his power gradually began to wane. Although fearful of his influence, Cabinet ministers increasingly sought to work around him, leaving his status intact despite the fact that some, such as Lloyd George, believed him incompetent.

Senior politicians accepted that in order to prosecute the war successfully, central control of labour was an imperative. This meant that the hitherto somewhat amorphous relationship between subject and State had to be changed for the common good. Registration was tangible evidence of that change. Suddenly, individuals could be compelled to serve the cause of the nation in time of war, and the State, with detailed information on every adult, could enforce compliance. It was a classic case of knowledge equalling power, but it was at least democratic. The vast reservoir of information that made compulsion possible could also be used to curb fraudulent enlistment.

It would take many weeks for the results of the national survey to be even tabulated, let alone examined. In the meantime, the enlistment procedure would remain as vulnerable to fraud as ever; at the same time Government policy towards the boys already serving in the army ensured that tens of thousands of boys would remain in khaki.

A month after Registration, on 22 September, Parliament returned to the issue of underage soldiering when Sir Arthur Markham addressed the Prime Minister.

There is one point I want to mention. I do not know whether I shall be strictly in order in doing so … In my own Constituency, boys of fifteen and sixteen have been and are being recruited, and the Government are perfectly well aware of it. In fact a boy of sixteen was recruited in my Constituency, and his father and mother went to the headquarters of the Sherwood Foresters and tried to get him back, but the authorities refused to allow him to go back … Are we to understand it is the policy of the Government to take
immature boys of fifteen and sixteen when they have set down a definite military age at which boys may be enlisted? I am told that these young boys are unable to stand the fatigue of a campaign, and many of them have to return from the War after the country has been put to the expense of training them.

Once again there was no direct response, and MPs moved on. However, a few days later, on the 28th, Harold Tennant, in reply to further questions, made a statement to the House. He informed MPs that instructions had been issued to commanding officers that a boy over the age of seventeen would be held to serve, even if an application for discharge had been made by the boy’s parents and a birth certificate proved he had enlisted fraudulently. Furthermore, if the medical officer certified that a boy was physically up to the standard of eighteen and a half years, he could be sent overseas. Tennant told Parliament:

A man’s actual age is not always a true measure of his physical efficiency, and I think that adequate security against youths who are immature being sent overseas is provided by the requirement of a definite medical certificate of fitness for service abroad.

As a matter of military efficiency, the army did not want physically ‘immature’ boys going to the front; it was, after all, a waste of resources. Nevertheless, thousands of underage boys reached the front line only to be exposed as inadequate. If a lad looked the part, he invariably was assumed to be able to play it. The fact that he was aged seventeen years was of singularly less importance.

The evident weaknesses in the enlistment process had been exposed for all to see. In 1914, underage recruitment was, if anything, seen as a public expression of patriotism and there was little thought that these boys would go overseas. With growing numbers of casualties, the mood had changed. The Government had reacted to increasing concern at the number of boys embarking
for the Western Front, as well as other theatres of war, by issuing instructions that recruitment officers must not turn a blind eye to fraudulent enlistment. The boys who had enlisted had nevertheless lied, and the Government’s decision to hold those boys over the age of seventeen, and even to allow their service abroad, was seen by some MPs as punishment by indifference. In effect, the boys’ plight was of their own making.

The Government was, nevertheless, partially responsible for the problem. During the war there was a policy of awarding to civilians various insignia, such as the ‘On War Service’ badge, to signify to the public at large that a man wearing civilian clothes was not necessarily a shirker. This was done to protect men essential to the war industry who had suffered abuse for not being in uniform. Incidents in which well-intentioned if misguided women had handed an un-enlisted man the white feather, signifying cowardice, were common. Such humiliation was usually indiscriminate as most feathers were given without knowledge of the recipient’s status, age or occupation.

The effect of issuing badges to protect key workers also helped to isolate those who, for no good reason, were not playing their part. Inevitably, a great many of these were underage boys who may not have been eligible for such badges. Boys of sixteen and seventeen were therefore exposed to the sly comment or the withering stare of those around them. The Government was, even if unintentionally, encouraging boy enlistment through embarrassment.

Recruiting sergeants now proactively sought out likely volunteers, openly pursuing and pestering boys like Hal Kerridge and Tommy Thomson to enlist under age. News of such tactics was received by Sir Arthur Markham from his constituents, and led him to believe that the men in charge of enlistment were either deliberately ignoring the instructions issued by the War Office or, worse still, were acting under the umbrella of some other hidden agenda. On 12 October, he sought answers in some of the bitterest exchanges yet heard in the Commons.

Seeing that under the present system of voluntary enlistment, numbers of boys are being recruited, will he say why no steps have been taken by Lord Kitchener to see that the regulations that the Government has laid down as to age limits are adhered to, and whether confidential instructions have been given by the military authorities that the regulations as to the age limit are to be ignored.

Harold Tennant replied that clear and precise instructions had been issued in June and that further clarification had been sent out as recently as the previous week.

My Hon. Friend is mistaken in suggesting that these instructions have been ignored by the military authorities responsible. Since these instructions were issued, no cases of underage enlistment have come to the notice of the War Office, but if my Hon. Friend knows of any and will furnish particulars, enquiry will, of course, be made.

Markham, clearly unhappy with the response, pressed the Undersecretary of State for War once again. Was the Cabinet aware the War Office had ‘deliberately connived’ in the enlistment of boys under the prescribed age in breach of the Regulations, and if so, had the Cabinet sanctioned such an action?

Tennant remained unflustered.

In this country no boys under the prescribed age, as laid down by Regulations, have been enlisted with the knowledge of the War Office, and I regret the imputation of deliberate connivance, which is wholly unfounded. Boys under that age are not wanted, either with or without the consent of their parents.

Markham asked:

Does my Right Hon. Friend seriously tell the House that the Government and the War Office do not know that boys under the
prescribed age have been enlisted from the time of the outbreak of War onwards? Does not the War Office know that? Does it know anything?

Tennant stuck resolutely to the Government line that the War Office’s policy was to take only boys of nineteen. ‘If boys under the proper age have been enlisted, it is their own fault for having made a false declaration,’ he contended.

The argument continued back and forwards until the Speaker intervened. Markham’s exasperation was evident for all to see. He did not take kindly to being stonewalled, and the inference that the Government saw the trouble of underage soldiering as one of the boys’ own making was galling.

In Markham’s eyes, unfettered patriotism and uncontrolled enlistment had combined to create a mess that the War Office showed no signs of tackling. In reality, the imperatives of war, particularly the increasing shortfall in recruitment, would mean that voluntary enlistment, as the predominant method of recruitment, was coming to an end.

Dispensing with the voluntary system was no easy matter for a Coalition Government resting on a consensus of politicians of the political left, right and centre. Asquith was uneasy about opening up a political rift between those ministers who supported compulsion, such as Lloyd George, and those who were against, mostly die-hard liberals who saw the right to choose as an inalienable freedom, such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Reginald McKenna. If strong feelings existed within the Cabinet, it was likely that there would be some public aversion to compulsion too.

By early autumn, voluntary enlistment had reached an all-time nadir but, before conscription could be fully considered, one further scheme was introduced to increase recruitment. If it was successful, the need for conscription might be deferred, in the short term. If it failed, then the Government could argue that it
had pursued all feasible alternatives and that if Britain were to win the war, conscription was the only solution.

The man charged with the task was Lord Derby. On 5 October 1915, he was given the post of Director-General of Recruiting as a prelude to the launch of his Derby Scheme just days after his appointment. In a secret War Office memorandum of 8 October, the role of the Scheme was spelt out.

It is not intended that the voluntary principle should be abandoned, even though it fails, as it does now, to produce the number of recruits required. The proposal is that the
balance
not forthcoming by voluntary effort should be called up, under special arrangements, from those available for service.

Derby’s idea was couched as ‘an appeal to the people’ but it was, in effect, an appeal to men aged eighteen to forty-one who were in reserved occupations to attest in the knowledge that they would not be called up until they were actually needed. All men between these ages would be classed in one of forty-six groups, according to age and marital status. The first twenty-three classes were occupied by unmarried men, class one being an unmarried eighteen-year-old, class two an unmarried nineteen-year-old, and so on. The second group was occupied by married men in the same age range, class twenty-four representing a married man aged eighteen, and so on. These men would be automatically transferred to the Army Reserve until they were required, whereupon they would be called up in ascending group order. There was one exception: any boy aged eighteen who attested under the Derby Scheme could not be called up until, at the earliest, three months before his nineteenth birthday.

There would be ample opportunity for Derby men to ensure that their work was covered during their absence. For married men, the scheme held out the incentive that they would not be required until all unmarried men had been called up first.

Privately, Derby had already become convinced of the need and merit of compulsion. Feeling like a ‘receiver who was put in to wind up a bankrupt concern’, he nevertheless felt compelled to try to make his scheme work.

I believe the moral effect of showing to our enemies that England is perfectly determined by the voluntary method to put into the field all that could be got by the compulsory method will be such that it will bring the war to a far quicker conclusion.

It was a bullish proposition and one not heard again during the debate on conscription three months later, the logical flip-side of his argument being that news that Britain had had to resort to conscription would give Germany fresh resolve to fight.

Lord Derby may have hoped that his scheme would provide the springboard for a new wave of recruits as in 1914 but, if the architect of the scheme himself was in doubt, it seems likely that sensible money was already backing compulsion. In the meantime, while the Derby Scheme was played out to its conclusion, the real battle, for national conscription, was well and truly under way.

The resistance to forging an army built on conscription was based on two main arguments. First, there was the liberal ideal that the decision to fight for one’s country should remain the inalienable right of the individual; secondly, that the forced employment of men in the army who had no wish to be there would undermine good order and discipline – indeed, many had argued that a conscripted man was not worth his salt against a man who enlisted willingly. The problem came when politicians and the army had to face up to the fact that continued reliance on voluntary enlistment would almost certainly cost Britain the war. The call for conscription could only become louder as the numbers enlisting voluntarily dropped in equal
proportion. During 1915 those calls were heard coming from many sources, not least from a highly influential pressure group that had campaigned since 1902 for compulsory military training.

Conscription might have won the recent support of a number of well-known politicians, but the organization that could lay claim to starting the campaign was the National Service League, a group set up for the sole and express purpose of waking the country up to the need for National Service. The League had attracted many prominent figures among its 100,000 members, including Lord Milner and Field Marshal Lord Roberts VC. In 1915 the conscription debate breathed new life into the movement.

As part of the campaign, the League’s honorary secretary, George Curnock, had begun a flurry of correspondence with Sir Arthur Markham, pointing out through the use of poignant examples the iniquitous nature of the current voluntary scheme. Curnock worked for the
Daily Mail
, a newspaper under the ownership of Lord Northcliffe, a vocal supporter of conscription. It was no coincidence that Curnock’s letters to Markham appear to have started in October at a time when Lord Derby’s scheme offered a possible reprieve for the voluntary system and Markham was involved in some of the frankest exchanges in the House on the issue of underage soldiering. The letters were sent as Curnock looked to ratchet up the pressure on the Coalition Government, with Markham the willing political conduit for the League’s aims.