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Sweating of women workers.
Insufficient feeding of children.
Employment of boys on work that to all intents ruins their chances in after-life — as mean a thing as can well be done.
Foul housing of those who have as much right as you and I to the first decencies of life.
Consignment of paupers (that is of those without money or friends) to lunatic asylums on the certificate of one doctor, the certificate of two doctors being essential in the case of a person who has money or friends.
Export of horses worn-out in work for Englishmen — save the mark! Export that for a few pieces of blood-money delivers up old and faithful servants to wretchedness.
Mutilation of horses by docking, so that they suffer, offend the eye, and are defenceless against the attacks of flies that would drive men, so treated, crazy.
Caging of wild things, especially wild song-birds, by those who themselves think liberty the breath of life, the jewel above price.
Slaughter for food of millions of creatures every year by obsolete methods that none but the interested defend.
Importation of the plumes of ruthlessly slain wild birds, mothers with young in the nest, to decorate our gentlewomen.
Such as these — shameful barbarities done to helpless creatures we suffer amongst us year after year. They are admitted to be anathema; in favour of their abolition there would be found at any moment a round majority of unfettered Parliamentary and general opinion. One and all they are removable, and many of them by small expenditure of Parliamentary time, public money, and expert care. Almost any one of them is productive of more suffering to innocent and helpless creatures, human or not, and probably of more secret harm to our spiritual life, more damage to human nature, than for example, the admission or rejection of Tariff Reform, the Disestablishment or preservation of the Welsh Church. I would almost say than the granting or non-granting of Home Rule — questions that sop up ad infinitum the energies, the interest, the time of those we elect and pay to manage our business. And I say it is rotten that, for mere want of Parliamentary interest and time, we cannot have manifest and stinking sores such as these treated and banished once for all from the nation’s body. I say it is rotten that due time and machinery cannot be found to deal with these and other barbarities to man and beast, concerning which, in the main, no real controversy exists. Rotten that their removal should be left to the mercy of the ballot, to private members’ Bills, liable to be obstructed; or to the hampered and inadequate efforts of societies unsupported by legislation.
Rome, I know, is not built in a day. Parliament works hard, it has worked harder during these last years than ever perhaps before — all honour to it for that. It is an august Assembly of which I wish to speak with all respect. But it works without sense of proportion, or sense of humour. Over and over again it turns things already talked into their graves; over and over again listens to the same partisan bickerings, to arguments which everybody knows by heart, to rolling periods which advance nothing but those who utter them. And all the time the fires of live misery that could, most of them, so easily be put out, are raging and the reek thereof is going up.
It is I, of course, who will be mocked at for lack of the senses of proportion and humour in daring to compare the Home Rule Bill with the caging of wild song birds. But if the tale of hours spent on the former since the last new thing was said on both sides be set against the tale of hours not yet spent on the latter, the mocker will yet be mocked.
I am not one of those who believe we can do without party, but I do see and I do say that party measures absorb far too much of the time that our common humanity demands for the redress of crying shames. And if, Sir, laymen see this with grief and anger, how much more poignant must be the feeling of members of Parliament themselves, to whom alone remedy has been entrusted!
Yours truly,
JOHN GALSWORTHY
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Treating Married Women Fairly
6 April 1914
Sir, I think it may serve a useful purpose to enunciate clearly three inevitable results of compelling professional women to give up their professions on marriage. (1) It prevents admirable women of a certain type of character from marrying at all; (2) it deprives the community of the work and the experience of another type of woman, who does not feel able to sacrifice her private life to her career; (3) it leads other women, of a more perfect balance, who demand the right to be both normal women as well as intelligences, to (a) wilfully and “dishonestly” concealing the fact of their marriage from their employers; or (b) living in union with a man without the legal tie of marriage.
Regarding the last alternative, I may say that it is sure steadily to increase if interference with married women’s work is persisted in. My own experience of three years of marriage, in which I have discovered the innumerable coercions, restrictions, legal injustices, and encroachments on her liberty imposed on a married woman by the community or sections of it, has brought me to the point of being ready to condone in any of my educated women friends a life lived (if in serious and binding union) with a man to whom she is not legally married. Three years ago such a course would have filled me with horror.
Only by treating married women properly, i.e., by leaving them the freedom of choice allowed to all other individuals, can innumerable unexpected evils be avoided.
Yours faithfully,
MARIE C. STOPES
Dr Stopes was at the time seeking to have her marriage annulled. Married Love, the work which made her name, in part by openly advocating that women practise birth control, was published in 1918.
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NOT A MANLY GAME
6 June 1914
Sir, The sooner it is realized that golf is merely a pleasant recreation and inducement to indolent people to take exercise the better. Golf has none of the essentials of a great game. It destroys rather than builds up character, and tends to selfishness and ill-temper. It calls for none of the essential qualities of a great game, such as pluck, endurance, physical fitness and agility, unselfishness and esprit de corps, or quickness of eye and judgment. Games which develop these qualities are of assistance for the more serious pursuits of life.
Golf is of the greatest value to thousands, and brings health and relief from the cares of business to many, but to contend that a game is great which is readily mastered by every youth who goes into a professional’s shop as assistant (generally a scratch player within a year!) and by the majority of caddies is childish. No one is more grateful to golf for many a pleasant day’s exercise than the writer, or more fully recognizes the difficulties and charm of the game, but there is charm and there are difficulties in (for instance) lawn tennis and croquet. It certainly seems to the writer that no game which does not demand a certain amount of pluck and physical courage from its exponents can be called great, or can be really beneficial to boys or men.
The present tendency is undoubtedly towards the more effeminate and less exacting pastimes, but the day that sees the youth of England given up to lawn tennis and golf in preference to the old manly games (cricket, football, polo, &c.) will be of sad omen for the future of the race.
I am, yours, &c.,
B. J. T. BOSANQUET
Bosanquet was himself a cricketer, for Middlesex and England, and noted as the inventor of the googlie – of which more later (see page (#litres_trial_promo)).
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The German people and the war
7 August 1914
Sir, May I add my testimony to that of Lady Phillips published in your issue of to-day? I started from Germany at 3 o’clock p.m. on Saturday last, with my wife and sister-in-law, and during the whole of our trying and anxious journey we experienced nothing but the utmost kindness and courtesy from both people and officials.
Perhaps I may add one thing more. It is too late to believe in the bona fides of the German Government; but in that of the German people I still believe. During my short visit I had conversations with many Germans of various classes. All believed that Russia had provoked the war in order to establish the Slav hegemony over the Germans, and that France was an accomplice in the spirit of revanche. All hated the idea of war — the look in their faces haunts me yet — but accepted it with a high courage because they believed it to be necessary for the safety of their country.
The German people, believe me, are better than their Government. We have to fight them, but let us do so in the spirit of gentlemen, giving them full credit for the admirable and amiable qualities to which those who know them best bear loudest witness.
W. ALISON PHILLIPS
Phillips was formerly a foreign correspondent with The Times. War between Britain and Germany had been declared three days earlier.
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old soldier
5 September 1914
Sir, I have, before the war was declared, offered my services as an old soldier in many regiments and as one who has been in service in South Africa (victory and disaster), to the authorities, but no acknowledgment has ever been received.
I have got over 100 men to recruit willingly in Fife.
I have had my three servants refused as “unfit” to-day — one for chest measurement, a well set up young man of 22; another very naturally, for varicose veins; a third because at some time he injured his knee and does not work well. The latter is a chauffeur, and long ago offered his services for transport service, and is a good driver. All these men are under 25 years of age. If the medical authority are not allowed to enlist such men for various services how can they render service to their country?
In my own position I consider it scandalous that I cannot fill a position in a cavalry regiment instead of a boy of 17 who has seen no service.
Yours faithfully,
ROSSLYN
The Earl of Rosslyn
P.S. — Of course I want to go to the front after a week’s drill.
Lord Rosslyn, the 5th Earl, was then in his mid-forties.
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Old Socks Wanted
12 December 1914
Sir, Mittens are wanted badly by the troops and they are scarce. A sock only wears out in the foot part, and if this is cut off (thrown away) and a hole made in the other part for the thumb to go through, an excellent mitten can be made without any expense. I am paying unemployed typists to sew them over, but in three months I have exhausted my circle of friends. May I ask your readers to send me all the old (clean) socks they can collect, in order in this way to provide more work and more comforts without cost and without interfering with the living of any other class?
Yours faithfully,
GEORGE PRAGNELL
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Colonel Cornwallis-West
12 January 1915
Sir, Lieutenant-Colonel George Cornwallis-West, who has been in continuous command since September of one of the battalions of the Royal Naval Division which were present at Antwerp, has been much annoyed and feels justly indignant at persistent rumours which have been going round to the effect that he has been “shot in England as a spy.”
Colonel West desires us to say that he is alive and well, and he will be much obliged if you will accord him the favour of publishing this letter.
We write as Colonel West’s solicitors. He was with us this morning.
We are, yours faithfully,
ROOPER AND WHATELY
Rooper and Whately, Solicitors
Cornwallis-West was primarily known to readers of The Times for his marriages. His first wife was the former Lady Randolph Churchill, thus making him stepfather to Winston Churchill — albeit the two men were the same age. He had recently wed the actress
Mrs Patrick Campbell, who first played Eliza Doolittle on stage.
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More Leeches needed
28 January 1915
Sir, Our country has been for many months suffering from a serious shortage of leeches. As long ago as last November there were only a few dozen left in London, and they were second-hand.
Whilst General Joffre, General von Kluck, General von Hindenburg, and the Grand Duke Nicholas persist in fighting over some of the best leech-areas in Europe, possibly unwittingly, this shortage will continue, for even in Wordsworth’s time the native supply was diminishing, and since then we have for many years largely depended on importations from France and Central Europe. In November I made some efforts to alleviate the situation by applying to America and Canada, but without success. I then applied to India, and last week, owing to the kindness of Dr. Annandale, Director of the Indian Museum at Calcutta, and to the officers of the P. and O. Company and to Colonel Alcock, M.D., of the London School of Tropical Medicine, I have succeeded in landing a fine consignment of a leech which is used for blood-letting in India. It is true that the leech is not the Hirudo medicinalis of our pharmacopœias, but a different genus and species, Limnatis granulosa. Judging by its size, always a varying quantity in a leech, we may have to readjust our ideas as to a leech’s cubic capacity, yet I believe, from seeing them a day or two ago, they are willing and even anxious to do their duty. They have stood the voyage from Bombay and the changed climatic conditions very satisfactorily, and are in a state of great activity and apparent hunger at 50, Wigmore-street, London, W.
It is true that leeches are not used to anything like the extent they were 80 years ago — Paris alone, about 1830, made use of some 52 millions a year — but still they are used, though in much smaller numbers.
It may be of some consolation to my fellow-countrymen to know that our deficiency in leeches is more than compensated by the appalling shortage of sausage-skins in Middle Europe. With true German thoroughness they are trying to make artificial ones!
I am yours faithfully,
A. E. SHIPLEY
The zoologist and Master of Christ’s College, Cambridge, Arthur Shipley, an expert on parasitic worms, was knighted in 1920 for his war work, which included letting the Master’s lodgings be used as a convalescent home for the wounded.
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Intelligent Passports
17 February 1915
Sir, A little light might be shed, with advantage, upon the high-handed methods of the Passports Department at the Foreign Office. On the form provided for the purpose I described my face as “intelligent.” Instead of finding this characterization entered, I have received a passport on which some official utterly unknown to me, has taken it upon himself to call my face “oval.”
Yours very truly,
BASSETT DIGBY
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Racing in Wartime
5 March 1915
Sir, I am afraid I cannot follow your reasoning with regard to Epsom and Ascot as set forth in your brief leading article to-day. I put aside the remarks about the affair of the Epsom Grand Stand, as to which there has been both misstatement and misapprehension, which I should have thought the matter-of-fact statement of the Stewards of the Jockey Club would have finally cleared away.
But that is a side, and I may add a false, issue. You say that our Allies “cannot understand how Englishmen can go to race meetings when their country is engaged in a life and death struggle.” With all submission I think our Allies understand us better than this. They know that Englishmen do not think it necessary to put up the shutters whenever they are engaged in war. They know that we are paying two millions a day for this war, and do not think that we shall add the sacrifice of our thoroughbred horses, which are so invaluable for the future of our Army. For, make no mistake, if our races are to cease our thoroughbred horses must disappear. No man can afford to keep bloodstock for the mere pleasure of looking at them in the stable. You hope that there will be no attempt to hold meetings at Epsom, and, “above all,” at Ascot this year. Of what nature, may I ask, is the original sin attaching to these meetings? You record races of a very inferior character almost daily in your columns, sometimes in impressive print. Why do you sanction these and select for special reprobation the two noblest exhibitions of the thoroughbred in the world?
But you say our Allies will misunderstand us. There are many, however, of our French allies who will remember that the winner of the Derby was announced in General Orders during the Crimean War.
Why, indeed, should we embark on the unprecedented course which you indicate, and condemn all our historical practice? Once before our country has been “engaged in a life and death struggle,” at least as strenuous and desperate as this; I mean that against the French Revolution and Napoleon. All through that score of bloody years the Epsom and Ascot Meetings were regularly held, nor indeed does it seem to have occurred to our forefathers that it was guilty to witness races while we were at war. I remember asking the late Lord Stradbroke which was the most interesting race that he had ever witnessed for the Ascot Cup. He replied (I am almost sure, though it is outside my argument) that for 1815, which was run on June 8, eight days before Quatre Bras, 10 days before Waterloo, when Napoleon and Wellington were confronting each other to contend for the championship of the world.
I am and desire to remain remote from controversy, but am anxious to remind you of our history and tradition with regard to this question, and to ask you to pause before you condemn not merely Epsom and “above all” Ascot, but also the principles and practice of ancestors not less chivalrous and humane than ourselves.
ROSEBERY
The 5th Earl of Rosebery — prime minister from 1894–95 — won several classic races as an owner, including the Derby twice.
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No Profits from War
14 September 1915
