From the archive: 1916
Janet Scott looks at the Friend archive at the end of 1916
The year 1916 had been a brutal one, with the Somme and Verdun exacting a terrible loss of life and enormous casualties on both sides. In the final edition of the year the Friend reflected on the events of the previous twelve months and considered the impact of war on the Religious Society of Friends, the nation and throughout Europe.
The war
After a detailed account of the battles on eastern and western fronts, the Friend commented on the ‘suffering and misery and want’ of the war. It was a situation before which the ‘imagination shrinks aghast’:
The other day the total of German “losses,” taken from the official lists, was published in the English press. The losses included nearly a million dead, besides another half-million prisoners and missing, and a half a million severely wounded. Those are the figures for but one combatant and probably not complete for her. It is long since the British totals were published, and we have no other similar returns before us. But the German official returns are sufficient to suggest the enormous total losses suffered by the twelve European nations now actively engaged in the struggle. This fact, even apart from a consideration of the material losses also suffered by every nation in Europe, should occasion serious questioning to what end this ruinous expenditure of human life, and is this the only means of its attainment?
At home
Conscription had been introduced earlier in the year and in Ireland there had been the ‘outburst of rebellious spirits’ at Easter. 1916 saw a change of government, with Lloyd George as the new prime minister, and conditions were steadily increasing in stringency:
Labour has become scarcer, except in the occupations directly ministering to war purposes; the employment of women in munition and other works has spread (in July the increase in the number of women employed as compared with July, 1914, was 866,000); and prices have risen continuously. The general average increase of food prices in the United Kingdom since the beginning of the war now stands at 84 per cent., ranging between margarine, tea and milk (which show increases respectively of 22, 51 and 52 per cent.) and fish, sugar, and eggs (in which cases the increases stand at 126, 170, and 178 per cent.)
The total expenditure of an ordinary working-class family in late 1916 was sixty per cent more than before the war. This led to a demand for increased wages, and on railways and in the mining industry especially large advances were agreed to:
In October the Government took over control of wheat and flour; the taking over of the South Wales coal mines followed; and the new Government has undertaken a great deal more, including the general control of food production, distribution, and consumption, and the whole of the shipping industry of the United Kingdom.
There was, also, a change that was welcomed by many – a new feature to time!
The saving of an hour of daylight through the summer was a boon which the war has brought us, for all the support awarded to the earlier Daylight Saving Bill and all the persistence of its promoter, the late William Willett, had entirely failed to carry so startling an innovation as an interference with the clocks in peace time. In war time it passed almost by common assent and with but faint-hearted opposition. Hence between May 21st and October 1st the bulk of the population rose dutifully and were at work an hour earlier than would otherwise have been the case.
Other news
An Economic Conference of the Allied Powers was held in Paris in June. Many observers feared that it had laid down for the future lines of policy whose tendency would be a ‘perpetuation of the war spirit’. Other important events were:
…the death of Lord Kitchener, creator of the great volunteer army of the present war, drowned with his staff by the sinking of the Hampshire off the Orkneys on June 5th; the appointment of Mr. Lloyd George as Secretary of War, his fourth office since he entered the Cabinet in 1905; the death of Yuan Shi Kai, President of the Chinese Republic from the time of its establishment and China’s strongest statesman; the return, after extraordinary experiences, of Sir Ernest Shackleton and most of his men from the Antarctic Expedition which set forth in 1914…
The Society
After recounting the business of different Yearly Meetings and various conferences, the Friend looked at the details of the work done by Friends for ‘sufferers from the war’. The Military Service Acts of 1916 led many to service with the Friends’ Ambulance Unit. For those who refused all connection with military service but who were willing to undertake other national service, the Friend reported a new option:
…the Unit established a General Service Section under a Sub-Committee, a section joined by upwards of 250 men, thus raising the membership of the Unit to considerably over 1,000. The number of the Unit’s Ambulance Trains was increased, in the course of the year, from two to four; two Hospital Ships – the Western Australia and the Glenart Castle – were staffed by the Unit.
Some men were placed at the Star and Garter Hospital, Richmond, and many more at King George’s Hospital in London, while Uffculme, Birmingham, was opened as a Hospital under the Unit’s care. The Friend commented:
Since the start, nearly 100,000 wounded and sick have been ambulanced, besides many other helpful activities, and the amount contributed to date exceeds £70,000. The work of the Friends’ War Victims’ Relief Committee has been enlarged by the extension to Russia, where medical and other relief has been opened up among refugees in the province of Samara, and to Corsica, Salonika, &c., where the Committee is working in association with the Serbian Relief Committee. Including the workers in London, there are now upwards of 180 men and women associated with the Committee in this branch of work, towards which Friends and others have contributed about £100,000.
The material work of the Emergency Committee had continued steadily during 1916. This involved giving assistance to the wives and children of interned aliens and in the internment camps. The magazine reported that ‘upwards of £35,000’ had been contributed to this effort and the Friends’ Service Committee had ‘experienced an exceedingly busy year’. The Friend reflected:
In many ways, the War has profoundly moved the peace-loving Society of Friends, and it has quickened many quiet lives into keen activity. Yet we find therein no cause for boastfulness. In the spirit of the Master’s charge to His disciples, may we not acknowledge, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it was our duty to do”? What fresh surprises the coming year may have in store for us, we do not prophesy, but amid the shadows, “Our Hope is in God.”
On 29 December 1916 the Friend also marked a significant anniversary:
This week The Friend as a weekly organ completes its first quarter of a century, the first weekly issue having appeared January 1st, 1892. The Friend is, of course, much older than twenty-five years. Having started in 1843, it is now 74 years old, 49 of which were as a six penny monthly.
The Friend, in 2016, has added another one hundred years to that figure.
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