In the meantime, the war was putting ever more COs into the gray uniforms covered with arrows worn by British prisoners. Among them was Stephen Hobhouse. In each of the prisons he was in, he found long rows of cells, four or five stories of them, facing each other across an open area. "Across the central space at first-floor level is stretched a wire netting to catch any unhappy man trying to commit suicide from above." Every cell had a peephole in the door "through which at times could be seen the sinister eye of the warder spying on the inmate." The warders sometimes padded silently along the corridors in felt slippers, to catch the prisoners unawares. Two of the day's meals consisted only of porridge, dry bread, and salt; the third was mostly potatoes. Each day began with emptying your cell's latrine bucket. You were allowed to send and receive one letter a month—but none at all for the first two months. There were regular chapel services, but once "while I was singing the Te Deum and looking round about me to get a sense of fellowship with the other faces, the warder's harsh voice broke in with 'Number B.27, look to your front.'"
Hobhouse had encouragement from an unexpected source. "Every soldier realises that mental suffering—such as is caused by solitary confinement etc.—requires infinitely more courage to bear than does physical suffering," wrote his brother Paul, who had twice been wounded at the front and was on his way back to the trenches. "However much we may disagree as to methods, I pray you may have some alleviation from your present lot and keep in good health for all the reconstruction after the war. Good luck to you."
Stephen had been thrown into solitary because he refused to obey the "rule of silence," by which prisoners were forbidden to speak to each other. Almost all COs worked out subterfuges to communicate anyway: muttering under their breath or tapping the water pipes that ran through each cell block, turning them into a Morse-code party-line telephone. But Hobhouse would have none of this. "Stephen had a very... awkward kind of conscience," recalled a fellow prisoner. "The spirit of love requires that I should speak to my fellow-prisoners," he wrote to his wife, Rosa, "the spirit of truth that I should speak to them openly." And so, he told the warders, he planned to talk to his comrades whenever he felt like it.
From then on, the materials for the mailbags he sewed as required prison labor were brought to his cell. And when the men were allowed out for daily exercise, Hobhouse was kept separated from the others. From the front in France, his brother Paul sent a message to the family: "Tell Stephen not to lose heart."
Hobhouse's integrity evidently touched even his keepers. On one of the monthly visits he was allowed, he was talking to Rosa under a guard's supervision, with just a table between them instead of the usual double set of bars or wire screens. As the visit ended, she asked if she could kiss her husband goodbye. "The warder bluntly refused." Stephen was marched back to his cell. Soon afterward, he recalled, "I heard a key in the lock, and the tyrant of our visit came in, and, in a way that indicated how deeply moved he was, begged me to believe that he felt as unhappy over the incident as we must be feeling.... My faith in humanity was renewed."
When his mother paid her first visit, she was driven to the prison by the family chauffeur, a former coachman, who entered with her. "Sorry to see you like this, Mr. Stephen," he said.
The immensely energetic Margaret Hobhouse was accustomed to getting her way in the world. Though no pacifist, she loved her son and was deeply worried about what prison conditions might do to someone with a history of nervous breakdowns before the war who was now experiencing nausea and digestive problems. So she turned to someone she thought could help. When as a baby Stephen Hobhouse had been baptized at a small country church near his family's Somerset estate, his godfather had been unable to attend, and so, following an old custom, a close family friend stood in as proxy godfather. The friend was Alfred Milner.
Milner listened carefully to Margaret Hobhouse and did his best. Files in the British National Archives are filled with memos and letters about Hobhouse's case, to Milner and functionaries below him, from bureaucrats scrambling to show they were taking the minister's concern seriously. From the prison at Wormwood Scrubs came typed excerpts copied from a letter Hobhouse had written to Rosa. From an official with an indecipherable signature came this shrewd evaluation: "If it were possible to discharge him from the Army on medical grounds I do not think he would be likely to become a dangerous peace agitator. He is a pure visionary.... He has a certain following who admire him for his sufferings for the cause. But his consequence would probably be diminished rather than increased if it were found possible to put an end to his 'martyrdom.'" Finally, from Lord Derby, now secretary for war, came a stubborn letter to Milner commenting acidly on conscientious objectors ("the majority of them are neurotics") and insisting that he could not release Hobhouse because "he absolutely declines to be examined by the Doctors."
Had he known that his mother had intervened on his behalf, Stephen Hobhouse would certainly have been appalled. She did something else as well, although neither he nor the public was aware of the full story. As Stephen described it, "Though she thought her eldest son wrong-headed and foolish in his extreme form of conscientious objection, she became more and more convinced of the cruel injustice of the hardships which he and the roughly 1,350 war resisters now in prison were enduring. She conceived the idea of collecting the facts and of publishing them with a reasoned appeal in a book."
I Appeal unto Caesar appeared in mid-1917, written, the cover said, "by Mrs. Henry Hobhouse." It rapidly sold 18,000 copies, and hundreds of trade union branches and other civic groups supported her appeal for the release of imprisoned COs. The book was taken seriously in large part because Margaret Hobhouse supported the war—she was a Conservative, the mother of two sons at the front, and the wife of a prominent and wealthy man active in Church of England affairs. To give it even more respectability, I Appeal unto Caesar had an introduction by the renowned Oxford classicist Gilbert Murray and endorsements by four eminent peers. None of them were opponents of the war, nor were many of those who reviewed it favorably. "This little book has stirred me deeply," wrote the novelist John Galsworthy in the Observer. "I urge one and all to read it."
Only more than half a century later did a Canadian scholar, Jo Vellacott, discover who secretly ghostwrote the book: Bertrand Russell. Margaret Hobhouse, after all, was not a writer, and Russell was a brilliant one; correspondence between them (which she asked him to destroy, although he did not do so) shows that both understood the book would have far more credibility if she were thought to be the author.
Russell was not only a socialist and the acting chairman of the No-Conscription Fellowship, he was also an ardent freethinker. Was he amused as he put his supple pen to writing a text that ostensibly came from a pillar of the ruling class and a supporter of the war and organized religion? It appears he was, for he could not resist slipping in a few sly tongue-in-cheek passages. While supposedly commenting on the misguided beliefs of the imprisoned COs, I Appeal unto Caesar says:
They maintain, paradoxical as it may appear, that victory in war is not so important to the nation's welfare as many other things. It must be confessed that in this contention they are supported by certain sayings of our Lord, such as, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Doubtless such statements are to be understood figuratively, but the history of religion shows that founders of religions are always apt to be understood literally by some of their more slavish followers.... They believe ... that hatred can be overcome by love, a view which appears to derive support from a somewhat hasty reading of the Sermon on the Mount.
No one detected Russell as the ghostwriter of these double entendres. Milner even gave a copy of the book to the King. In gratitude to Russell, Margaret Hobhouse made an anonymous contribution to the No-Conscription Fellowship. Russell himself, lips sealed, offered this comment in an article under his own name in the NCF's journal: "As a result largely of Mrs. Hobhouse's 'I Appeal Unto Caesar,' many influential people who
formerly had only contempt and derision for the C.O. have now come to believe that the policy of indefinitely prolonged imprisonment is not the wisest." Stephen Hobhouse and his like-minded comrades, however, remained in prison.
Under Haig's command, the roughly one and a half million British soldiers on the Western Front continued to wage war to little visible effect. Other than tens of thousands of deaths, the spring and early summer of 1917 included a hapless cavalry attack, in which doomed British horsemen rode off into a blizzard singing "The Eton Boating Song," and the simultaneous detonation of 19 mines containing nearly a million pounds of explosives beneath German trenches in Belgium, producing what is believed to have been the loudest single man-made sound in history up to that moment.
Hoping for a path out of the endless bloodshed, millions around the world read the papers each day for news about Russia. Although the Provisional Government had not withdrawn from the war, it had proclaimed something that didn't yet exist in Britain: universal suffrage. The more radical Petrograd Soviet had gone further, issuing a call, after Lenin's return to Russia, for "peace without annexations or indemnities [reparations], on the basis of the self determination of peoples." Antiwar forces took encouragement as this spirit seemed to be echoed elsewhere. Although scoffed at, ironically, by both the British government and the Kaiser, the German parliament in mid-1917 passed a resolution, by an almost two-to-one margin, calling for a peace agreement without annexations or indemnities. Pope Benedict XV put forth a somewhat foggy peace plan echoing the idea and suggesting that all occupied territories be evacuated. In addition, there were occasional ambiguous peace overtures to the Allies—always rebuffed or ignored—from Germany's less enthusiastic junior partners, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey. All this kept hope in the air.
Addressing them as "my sisters," Charlotte Despard wrote an open letter to Russian women, embracing them with the same exuberance she had shown for so many other causes: "I am with you—we are one." If the Russian people could overthrow an autocracy, enfranchise everyone, and set up local councils of workers and soldiers, why could Britain not do the same? She and many others made plans to meet in the northern industrial city of Leeds in early June 1917 for the Great Labour, Socialist and Democratic Convention.
Milner, who kept a close eye on such matters, was dismayed at news of the conference, trumpeted in a leaflet titled "Follow Russia." He sent Lloyd George two clippings from a labor newspaper, underlining passages that particularly alarmed him, one calling for the people "of this and all the other belligerent countries to take matters into their own hands as the people of Russia have already done."
"My dear Prime Minister.... I think there is still time to instruct the Press ... not to 'boom' the Leeds proceedings too much," he wrote. "And I fear the time is very near at hand, when we shall have to take some strong steps to stop the 'rot' in this country, unless we wish to 'follow Russia' into impotence and dissolution."
In Leeds, meanwhile, some 3,000 would-be revolutionaries, meeting in an enormous brick movie theater with an ornate Gothic façade and organ, kicked off the proceedings with a rousing rendition of "The Red Flag" and a moment of silence in memory of Keir Hardie. All the major figures on the British left were there. Many delegates were still outraged about the Wheeldon frame-up, and one speaker railed against the "thousands of 'Alex Gordons' in the country." And, indeed, undercover operatives from the various competing intelligence agencies were in the audience. In a report to the War Cabinet, one noted, with satisfaction, that some Leeds hotels had canceled bookings for those coming to the conference, who had to stay in the homes of local socialists instead. "There can be no doubt on the part of any one who is familiar with ... the Leeds Conference," the agent wrote, "that it is intended to lead, if possible, to a revolution in this country." The resolution adopted by the delegates that most shocked him, so much so that he underlined its key phrase, called for "the complete independence of Ireland, India and Egypt."
The example of Russia, repeatedly invoked, raised everyone's hopes. Despard, in her trademark black mantilla, black robe, and sandals, gave a militant speech and was elected to a 13-member "provisional committee" charged with setting up "Councils of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates" throughout Britain; she herself undertook to organize such a soviet in Newcastle. The delegates voted to send representatives to Russia in a show of solidarity. And Sylvia Pankhurst suggested to the crowd that the provisional committee to which she, too, was elected might someday be a Provisional Government of Great Britain.
Bertrand Russell received a huge ovation when he spoke about "the thousand men now in prison in this country because they believe in the brotherhood of men.... They who had to begin their battle when the world was very dark, now have the knowledge that the world looks no longer so dark as it did, and the hope and new happiness which has come into the lives of all of us, that also is with them in prison." He was more optimistic than he had been since the war began: "The control of events is rapidly passing out of the hands of the militarists of all countries...," he wrote a few days later. "A new spirit is abroad."
18. DROWNING ON LAND
IF THERE WERE ever a war that should have had an early, negotiated peace, it was this one. Before the conflict began, the major powers may have been in rival alliances, but they had all been getting along reasonably well, exchanging royal visits, not squabbling over borders, and trading heavily with one another, and their corporations were investing in joint business ventures together. Could there ever have been a more improbable chain of events than the one from the assassinations at Sarajevo to an entire continent in flames a mere six weeks later? And why, in that case, could it not be undone?
The tragedy was that no one could come up with a peace formula that satisfied both sides. "No indemnities" attracted the Germans—but not France or Belgium, which had seen thousands of square miles of their territory reduced to charred rubble and tens of thousands of their citizens rudely conscripted to work in German war factories. Withdrawal of troops from occupied land appealed to France, Russia, Italy, Serbia, and Belgium, all of which were partly, wholly (Serbia), or almost wholly (Belgium) occupied, but not to Germany or Austria-Hungary, whose troops were fighti ng almost exclusively on enemy territory, much of which German expansionists yearned to acquire permanently. Restoration of colonies to their prewar owners—another ingredient of some peace plans—appealed to Germany but not to Britain, France, Belgium, and South Africa, battling their way to control of Germany's potentially lucrative African possessions. On top of this, for the Allies the humiliation and suffering of being occupied, for the Central Powers the experience of being half starved by the blockade, and for both sides the unrelenting high-pitched propaganda that portrayed the enemy as unparalleled monsters, left the general public in all the warring countries—save Russia, now deep in revolutionary turmoil—so filled with rage at the other side that negotiations seemed politically unthinkable.
A further obstacle, one that accompanies many wars, also loomed. Men had been maimed and killed in such unimaginable numbers that any talk of a compromise peace risked seeming to dishonor them and render their sacrifices meaningless. Or this, at least, was the feeling when there still seemed hope of victory. But could that change if the Western Front deadlock continued and victory—for either side—came to seem impossible? Then, at last, might public opinion see the madness of the war? Especially in Britain, where they were most numerous, this was the hope that peace activists clung to.
The next attempt to break the stalemate on the Western Front came from France, which in April 1917 launched a major attack. It failed spectacularly: in the space of a few days, 30,000 French soldiers were killed and 100,000 wounded, gaining a few miles in one spot and in some places nothing at all. It was the Battle of the Somme all over again; the only thing different was the nationality of the troops being mowed down.
What followed, however, was something new: a rash of mutinies—the high command preferred the term "collective indiscipl
ine"—that swept through the French army. Troops resting in reserve areas refused orders to return to the front, sang "The Internationale," and flaunted the red flag. One group of soldiers hijacked a train and tried to drive it to Paris. An infantry regiment took over a town and refused to move. Troops in a few units even elected soviets. Rebellions broke out in more than 30 divisions. It was not that troops deserted entirely, as in Russia; indeed, many of the mutineers stayed at their posts in the trenches, simply refusing to take part in suicidal new attacks. Clearly, though, the French army was almost paralyzed. The high command had to tell its British allies what was happening, in strictest confidence. Haig went to Paris, met with French leaders, and in his obdurate way insisted that attacks must continue. But he was worried: "Revolution is never very deep under the surface in France," he wrote to the secretary for war in London. "The crust is very thin just now."
The French general who ordered the ill-fated offensive lost his job, and a new commander, General Philippe Pétain, immediately set to work. He improved the rest billets behind the lines, upgraded the army's food, and increased leaves. Touring his front line, he spoke to every mutinous regiment, promising an end to attacks that needlessly wasted lives. And he was, by military standards of the time, very sparing in meting out punishment: although 3,427 men were convicted of mutiny, normally a capital offense, only 49 were shot. Despite hints of problems, the Germans never realized the extent of disarray in the army facing them—nor did readers of censored British and French newspapers. But Pétain's success at containing the upheaval came at a price: his still-restive army simply could not be ordered to undertake any major new attack. While he began the long work of rebuilding French military discipline and morale, he pressed his British allies hard to distract the Germans with a major assault of their own.