The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (54 page)

Do you call yourselves British, boys?… Your fathers are the rulers of England, and your forefathers have made England what she is now. Do you imagine that if they had minded a little snow that Canada would have been added to the Empire, or if they had minded heat we should ever possess India or tropical Africa? Never let me see you shrink from heat or cold. You will have to maintain the Empire which they made.
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This harangue affected the young Meath deeply, and later he set about making sure that future generations would keep faith with their ancestors.

Homage to the imperial past and commitment to its future were the objects of Empire Day, which Meath wanted celebrated annually in schools throughout the empire on 24 May, Queen Victoria’s birthday. Empire Day was commemorated first in 1902 and within four years was being observed in 6,000 schools. A parliamentary attempt to secure it official recognition failed in 1908, to the audible delight of Labour and Irish MPs, and Labour councils such as Battersea banned it from their schools as militaristic. Nevertheless, Empire Day increased in popularity, especially in south-eastern England and rural areas everywhere. In 1916 a wartime government, willing to do anything that would encourage popular patriotism, gave Empire Day official recognition.

Something of the flavour of an Edwardian Empire Day is conveyed by a pamphlet issued by the Empire Day League in 1912 with suggestions for uplifting entertainments. For older schoolchildren there was an abridged version of
Henry V
which centred on the scenes before, during and after Agincourt. Younger pupils were offered a simple pageant in which a procession of heroes, whose ‘noble deeds’ had contributed to the growth of the empire, paid homage to Britannia. Clive and Nelson rubbed shoulders with symbolic figures representing the army, navy and, an up-to-date touch, ‘air power’. As each appeared, they were greeted with rehearsed cheers from the spectators – ‘Hurrah to our brave soldiers!’ and so on. In conclusion, Britannia made a short, inspiring speech: ‘My Empire shall hold; and, like summer roses, perfume the world with freedom’s gladsome fragrance. Be brave, be bold, do right!’ In an alternative and equally colourful
tableau vivant
children dressed to represent the dominions and colonies paid their respects to their mother, Britannia. Recommended costume for South African blacks consisted of ‘two fur rugs’, ‘strings of melon seeds’ and an improvised assegai.
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The spectacles were a climax to a morning during which children had learned patriotic songs such as ‘I’d like to be a soldier or a sailor’, which was performed by girls, and memorised facts about the empire such as, ‘They [the colonies] have helped to make our people the richest in the world’. Work and fun were not enough, and Meath emphasised that pupils should be given the rest of the day off. The young, he wrote, ‘do not readily appreciate the importance of any event unless it brings a holiday in its train.’

Everyday lessons were constructed around imperial themes. The Prince and Princess of Wales’s Indian tour of 1906 was an opportunity for elementary schoolchildren to learn about the subcontinent and the firm and fair way in which it was governed. Nationalist agitation, which had recently flared up in Bengal, was brushed aside with the statement, ‘The British rule has brought peace … and the native police and soldiers are usually able to preserve order among a people who are naturally docile.’
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Public schoolboys continued to be bombarded with imperial propaganda, relentlessly delivered by headmasters who were invariably Anglican clerics of the muscular Christian persuasion. Themes of athletic prowess and warrior patriotism mingled in the rousing school songs which became so popular at this time. The sentiments of Harrow’s ‘
Forty Years On
’, which always brought tears to Churchill’s eyes, were typical:

God gives us bases to guard or beleaguer,

Games to play out in earnest or fun,

Fights for the fearless and goals for the eager,

Twenty and thirty and forty years on.

Stiffened by such appeals and brought to a high pitch of fitness on the playing field, the public school man was ready to do his duty by the empire; but what of boys from other classes?

The question was asked continually in Edwardian Britain. The answers were often disquieting; in 1898 one commentator summed up working-class youth as ‘stunted, narrow chested, easily wearied, yet voluble, excitable, with little ballast, stamina and endurance’.
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Generalisations of this sort were confirmed by the cold statistics gathered by army doctors who examined would-be recruits, and the surveys undertaken in the urban slums by proto-sociologists like Seebohm Rowntree. The underfed, sickly sons of the industrial cities were evidence that Anglo-Saxon manhood was in decline. On one level, this fact was ammunition for social reformers of all persuasions, and on another, it provided the impetus for a body of determined imperialists to launch programmes for the regeneration of the masses. What was needed, claimed Baden-Powell, was the ‘hardening of the nation’ and the ‘building up of self-reliant, energetic manhood’ which would, in time, be able to populate and defend the empire.
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‘Wishy-washy slackers’ were Baden-Powell’s target. A public celebrity, he used his considerable influence to awaken the nation’s youth to its duty and prepare it for its fulfilment. In an appeal which echoed that of Meath’s schoolmaster, he invoked the exploits of past heroes to shame their lethargic descendants:

Your forefathers worked hard, fought hard, and died hard to make this empire for you. Don’t let them look down from heaven, and see you loafing about with your hands in your pockets, doing nothing to keep it up.
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In December 1904 he exhorted the readers of
Union Jack
and the
Marvel
to learn how to drill and shoot. He concluded with an appeal for letters from captains of soccer and cricket XIs whose teams were keen to learn how to fight.
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Baden-Powell’s ideas were translated into action in 1908 with the foundation of the Boy Scouts who, two years later, totalled 100,000. The scouting movement’s philosophy was simple patriotism, and its activities, largely undertaken outdoors, were derived from Baden-Powell’s textbook on fieldcraft and survival which was based on his experiences fighting the Ndebele in Rhodesia. Appropriately, Scouts wore a khaki uniform like that of one of Rhodes’s troopers, complete with broad-brimmed bush hat and bandanna.

The Boy Scouts joined a number of other organisations dedicated to the proper diversion and instruction of youth. The well-established Boys Brigade drilled its largely working-class members with wooden rifles; dressed them in uniforms, which included the same pill-box hat that was then worn by soldiers; and instilled doctrines of Christian manliness and loyalty to crown and country. There were other, smaller bodies dedicated to the creation of upright and sturdy sons of empire, including the Anti-Smoking League and the League of St George. The latter campaigned against pornography and masturbation, which was also a source of anguish to Baden-Powell, who warned his scouts that, quite literally, it weakened the imperial seed, led to general debility and even madness.

The future mothers of the imperial breed received their own indoctrination. The Church of England Girls’ Friendly Society which, in 1913, had 200,000 members, was primarily concerned with giving moral guidance to young working-class women. As well as counselling deference, chastity and quietism, this society helped unmarried women to emigrate, and its leaflets contained a scattering of imperialist propaganda. ‘I look on imperialism as a means of eradicating the selfishness of Socialism,’ announced the Honourable Mrs Joyce, the society’s emigration secretary, in 1913.
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The Girl Guides, an offshoot of the scouting movement, adopted similar patriotic values. A leaflet issued for Guides in 1910 drew their attention to a role that they might have to play in defence of the empire:

Girls! Imagine that a battle has taken place in and around your town or village … what are you going to do? Are you going to sit down and wring your hands and cry, or are you going to be plucky, and go and do something to help your fathers and brothers…?
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Just how far those on the receiving end of Edwardian patriotic and imperial propaganda were converted by it cannot be known. It contained, and this was recognised and regretted by those on the left, elements designed to smother class politics. There were also charges that the emphasis placed on such military values as obedience and duty fostered militarism, which was true up to a point. Admiration for the services had grown throughout the nineteenth century, but the British cult of the warrior hero had always laid great stress on his Christian faith which, as with Gordon, was the basis for his superior courage. The fighting man was respected not just because he was physically strong and brave, but because of that interior moral stamina which made him perform his duty.

Like his predecessor, the Edwardian soldier was essentially a bringer of civilisation. This was how he was depicted in newspaper reports of the small and rather unglamorous campaigns fought between 1902 and 1914 on various frontiers. The
Daily Mail,
now with a daily circulation of three quarters of a million, gave coverage to operations in Somaliland during 1902 and 1903, and the invasion of Tibet in 1903. In each case the old formula was adopted, with the empire’s adversaries being represented as wild, brave and reckless savages engaged in a hopeless struggle against civilisation. Incidentally, in its reporting of the Somaliland war, the
Mail
astonishingly asserted that the Mad Mullah’s near victory at Erigo in 1902 was certain proof of his clinical insanity.
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Presumably only a lunatic could expect to defeat a British army!

*   *   *

The patrician high priests of imperialism, while they approved of attempts to widen the public’s knowledge of the empire, had always been disdainful of the sudden upsurges of popular patriotism that had been triggered by victories in colonial wars. For the likes of Chamberlain and Milner, jingoism distracted the public from the more serious but less romantic aspects of empire, and was an uncomfortable reminder of the fickleness of public opinion. It was a drawback of democracy that the public at large was easily bored and could not be persuaded to concentrate on any issue for long. For this reason, such figures as Milner were anxious to convert to the imperial creed those who really mattered, the young men who would be the future rulers of Britain and the empire.

In South Africa, Milner had collected around himself a knot of young, zealous imperialists who had, between 1900 and 1906, worked with him towards the country’s reconstruction. Known as the kindergarten, this band of talented Oxonians included the journalist and future novelist John Buchan, Philip Kerr and Lionel Curtis, all of whom would dedicate their lives to the promotion of imperialism. Their circle was joined by Leo Amery and formed the nucleus for the Round Table, a cross-party, imperial pressure group founded in 1910 and partly financed by the Rhodes Trust. The Round Table’s object was to influence those who shaped public opinion in Britain and the empire by press articles, pamphlets, discussion groups and individual contacts.

An imperial federation was the Round Table’s goal. Its members believed that Britain could not survive economically and remain a global power unless it became the dominant force within a closely bonded empire. They feared that this ‘big’ issue could easily get lost amid public debates over tariffs and the price of a loaf of bread. Just what the Round Table achieved is hard to judge, at least before 1914. Lionel Curtis, the Round Table’s roving ambassador to the dominions was cordially welcomed by their leaders, but his message cut no ice with them. As in the colonial conferences, they identified manoeuvres to secure a formal imperial unity with the machinations of the British ruling class. There was also an understandable fear that if a federation was formed, the dominions would find themselves relegated to the role of passive junior partners.
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So, while dominions were sincere in their profession of emotional attachment to Britain, they remained extremely lukewarm towards the forging of more tangible links.

By 1914 imperial union was as far off as ever. There had been greater progress in making the public and the working class in particular more aware of the empire. It is impossible to know how far the catchwords of those organisations which promoted various forms of patriotism and imperialism entered the national consciousness. Many who heard them became the rank and file of the mass volunteer army formed between 1914 and 1916 to fight on the Western Front. Then, as in the Boer War, the slogans of popular patriotism did not travel to the fighting line; the letters home written by working-class soldiers reflected little of the strident patriotism whipped up by the press and the recruiters or the lower key pre-war imperial propaganda. What they did reveal was an acute sense of duty, a determination to persevere and an intense loyalty to comrades and unit.

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To Join the Khaki Line: The Empire and the Coming of War

Hints that a major war was imminent, even welcome, were implicit in much Edwardian imperial propaganda. Baden-Powell urged his Boy Scouts to ‘Be Prepared’, and in a pamphlet of 1911 the National Service League reminded the British ‘lad’ that he alone stood between ‘his mother and sister, his sweetheart and his girlfriend’ and the ‘inconceivable infamy of alien invasion’. Any ethical or physical qualms which the young patriot might have had about taking up arms were swept aside by the unbelievably glib assertions that ‘war is not murder, as some fancy, war is sacrifice – which is the soul of Christianity’, and ‘fighting and killing are not of the essence of it [war], but are accidents’.
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