'Your Country Needs You!

Arthur Bennett's War Diary: Saturday, August 29^th 1914 – It is now reported that D.H. (who nevertheless knows colonial and quasi-military and military life), as well as Mr Johnston, can do nothing but read the papers, and think, think, think, and mourn because English youths will not enlist. It was given forth that while at Tendring and Weeley and other villages the response to the call was excellent, the response in Thorpe was miserable - indeed, it was said, only one man. No doubt every village is saying the same. In any case the alleged state of affairs would be explicable by the fact that there is a camp at Tendring and another at Weeley and youths are thereby fired.

   However, on enquiry from other sources I found that Thorpe was doing excellently. Lockyer, a grim and very serious patriot and the chief pillar of the Rifle Club, said that 5 men had gone from his club alone. Cook, second gardener, who belongs already to the National Reserve, put down his name again, and was told that for the present he was not wanted. Few young men, eligible for recruiting and able to go, remain. Miss Nerney said the same. It was she who told me that Mrs Wood (parson’s wife)had said to a young man who offered certain sorts of help: ‘You can only help in one way. You can enlist.’ As parson’s wife and familiar with the village, she knew or ought to have known that the young man had a widowed mother depending on him/ Mrs Wood is a very decent woman, and that she should have said such a thing shows how far the feeling of the middle class will carry them.

   Yesterday morning I wrote an article telling some incontrovertible truths about this recruiting question. Mrs Sharpe ‘agreed with every word of it’ but did not think it ought to be published. Marguerite did not like it at all. Both were afraid of it. I should not be at all surprised if the Daily News is not afraid of it In that case I shall probably send it to the New Statesman.