The Times Great Letters: A century of notable correspondence

If you do not like Mr. Goldbug you can put up and vote for Mr. Sanity, giving Mr. Goldbug your second choice, in the most perfect confidence that in any case your vote cannot help to return Mr. Wurstberg.

There is the cardinal fact in the discussion of this matter. Let the reader grasp that, and he has the key to the significance of this question. With Proportional Representation with a single transferable vote (this specification is necessary because there are also inferior imitations of various election-riggers figuring as proportional representation) it is impossible to prevent the effective candidature of independent men of repute beside the official candidates. Without it the next Parliament, the Parliament that will draw the broad lines of the Empire’s destinies for many years, will be just the familiar gathering of old Parliamentary hands and commonplace party hacks. It will be a Parliament gravitating fatally from the very first towards the old party dualism, and all the falsity and futility through which we drifted in the years before the war. Proportional Representation is the door for the outside man; the Bill that establishes it will be the charter to enfranchise the non-party Briton. Great masses of people to-day are utterly disgusted with “party” and an anger gathers against the “party politician” as such that he can scarcely suspect. To close that door now that it has been opened ever so slightly, and to attempt the task of Imperial Reconstruction with a sham representative Parliament on the old lines, with large masses of thwarted energy and much practical ability and critical power locked out, may be a more dangerous and disastrous game than those who are playing it seem to realize at the present time.

I am, &c.,

H. G. WELLS

1: meaning “to murder by smothering” and derived from the crimes of the early 19th-century Edinburgh “body-snatchers” Burke and Hare.

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Votes for WomEn

26 May 1917

Sir, Mrs. Humphry Ward disputes the authority of the present House of Commons to deal with the question of Women’s Suffrage. She seems to have forgotten that at the time of the last General Election the subject was already prominently before the country: the majority of members were more or less definitely pledged to the women of their constituencies to support it; and Mr. Asquith had given a definite assurance that if his party returned to power the matter should be dealt with exactly as it is proposed to deal with it in the present Bill — by a free vote of the House of Commons.

Mrs. Ward prophesies that the age limit of 30 for women voters will not be long maintained. She says nothing of the much more important barrier against complete equality which the Bill proposes to set up; by basing the men’s vote on residence, the women’s on occupation. The effect of this and the age limit together will be that men voters will be in an overwhelming majority in every constituency in the country. If, therefore, as women hope and believe will be the case, the franchise should be further extended and eventually placed on a basis of complete equality, it can only be because men are willing for it, having become convinced by experience of its actual working that the effect will be beneficial and not harmful.

She says, also, nothing at all of the argument which, perhaps more than any other, has moved many of the most weighty and inveterate opponents of former years to give the Bill their active support. In what sort of position will Parliament be placed, when the time comes at the end of the war to redeem the pledges it has given to trade unionists, if women are still outside the pale of the franchise? Legislation will be necessary, involving probably, as Mr. Asquith has pointed out “large displacements of female labour.” Will it be to the credit or dignity of Parliament that it should be open to the charge of bartering away the interests of non-voters in order that it may protect those of its constituents?

The chief argument, however, of Mrs. Ward’s letter is that the physical sufferings and sacrifices of women in the present war are not comparable with those of men. This is undeniable. Women have not based their claims to the vote on their sufferings or their services. They have never asked for it as a reward for doing their obvious duty to the country in its time of peril. But the vote, after all, is not a sort of D.S.O. It is merely the symbol of the responsibilities of ordinary citizenship, which requires every one to serve the country according to the measures of his or her opportunity, and to make sacrifices for it, if the call for that comes. Is physical suffering, physical sacrifice, the only kind that counts?

I saw recently a letter from a young wife whose husband had just fallen in the trenches. She wrote — “After all, we have nothing to regret. If it were all to come over again and we knew what would happen, he would go just as cheerily as before, and God knows I would not hold him back.”

There spoke the authentic voice of the women of this country, women who have in their blood and their bones the traditions of an Imperial race. In time of peace they may have been bemused by the false doctrine taught by Mrs. Ward and her school, that Imperial and national questions are matters for men, not women. In time of war instinct reasserts itself. They feel as patriots and as citizens, and their citizenship so manifests itself that it compels recognition in the traditional form for which women have asked so long by granting of the Parliamentary vote.

Yours faithfully,

ELEANOR F. RATHBONE

Eleanor Rathbone was a leading campaigner for women’s rights and social reform, including the introduction of child benefit. She became an MP in 1929, 11 years after women (at first aged 30 and above) were given the right to vote, and to be elected to Parliament.

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An Act of Wilful Defiance

31 July 1917

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise.

LT. SIEGFRIED SASSOON

The poet’s celebrated letter of protest was sent originally to the Bradford Pioneer newspaper and republished four days later in The Times, having been read out in the House of Commons. Sassoon, who had won the Military Cross in France, had been on convalescent leave after being wounded. He wrote the letter after deciding to refuse to return to the trenches. His friend and fellow war poet Robert Graves persuaded the authorities that Sassoon was mentally ill and therefore unfit to be court-martialled. He was treated instead for shell shock at Craiglockhart Hospital, Edinburgh, where he met and encouraged Wilfred Owen in his writing.

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Poppies

17 September 1917

Sir, The subjoined letter has been received by the mother of a young officer in the Household Battalion, and was written from the fighting line in Flanders. It pleasantly varies the story of devastation daily transmitted from the front, and incidentally reveals the sort of young fellow who, in various degrees of rank, is captaining our gallant Armies. This one, impatiently awaiting the birthday that marked the minimum age for military service, went from Eton straight to a training camp, and in due course had his heart’s desire by obtaining a commission. He followed close in the footsteps of an elder brother, also an Etonian, killed in his first month’s fighting.

“In England there seems to be a general belief that nothing but every imaginable hardship and horror is connected with the letters B.E.F., and, looking at these three letters, people see only bully beef, dug-outs, shell holes, mud, and such like as the eternal routine of life. True enough, these conditions do prevail very often, but in between whiles they are somewhat mitigated by most unexpected ‘corners.’ The other day we took over from a well-known Scottish regiment, whose reputation for making themselves comfortable was well known throughout the division, and when I went to examine my future abode I found everything up to the standard which I had anticipated. Standing on an oak table in the middle of the dug-out was a shell-case filled with flowers, and these not ordinary blossoms, but Madonna lilies, mignonette, and roses. This vase, if I may so term the receptacle, overshadowed all else and by its presence changed the whole atmosphere, the perfume reminding me of home, and what greater joy or luxury is there for any of us out here than such a memory?

“After having duly appreciated this most unexpected corner I inquired where the flowers had been gathered, and was told they had come from the utterly ruined village of Fampoux close by. At once I set out to explore and verify this information. Sure enough, between piles of bricks, shell holes, dirt, and every sort of débris, suddenly a rose in full bloom would smile at me, and a lily would waft its delicious scent and seem to say how it had defied the destroyer and all his frightfulness. In each corner where I saw a blossoming flower or even a ripening fruit, I seemed to realize a scene belonging to this unhappy village in peaceful days. Imagination might well lose her way in the paths of chivalry and romance perhaps quite unknown to the inhabitants of Fampoux. I meandered on through the village until I struck a trench leading up to the front line; this

I followed for a while until quite suddenly I was confronted by a brilliancy which seemed to me one of the most perfect bits of colour I have ever seen. Amongst innumerable shell holes there was a small patch of ground absolutely carpeted with buttercups, over which blazed bright, red poppies intermixed with the bluest of cornflowers. Here was a really glorious corner, and how quickly came memories of home! No one, however hardened by the horrors of war, could pass that spot without a smile or a happy thought. Perhaps it is the contrast of the perfection of these corners with the sordidness of all around that makes them of such inestimable value. Some such corners exist throughout France, even in the front line trenches. It may not be flowers, it may be only the corner of a field or barn; it may be some spoken word or a chance meeting. No matter what it is if it brings back a happy memory or reminds one of home. It is like a jewel in a crown of thorns giving promise of another crown and of days to come wherein, under other circumstances, we may be more worthy of the wearing.”

Yours faithfully,

HENRY LUCY

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On the Eton Word “Rouge”

13 October 1917

Sir, I was once, about 30 years ago, discussing the Eton word “rouge” and the verb “to rouge” among some English friends at Florence, one of whom was the Hon. Alethea Lawley, sister of Lord Wenlock, of Escrick, in East Yorkshire. (NB — She has been for several years married to a Venetian, Signor Wiel, formerly Librarian of the Biblioteca Marciana.) Miss Lawley exclaimed: “Oh, but ‘to rouge’ is quite a common word in our part of Yorkshire, meaning ‘to push one’s way through anything’, and I have often, when two people are quarrelling, heard one of them say, ‘Now don’t ye come a-rouging against me!’” even as at Eton we might have said: “There against was an awful crowd, but I soon rouged my way through it!” Whenever I see a doubtful East Yorkshire word, I always turn to Vigfussen’s Icelandic Dictionary, wherein I have occasionally found the solution of some difficulties both in Norwegian as well as in East Yorkshire provincialisms. I find in Vigfussen, s.v.: Rydja (more anciently hrjóda) — rydja sér til rúms = “to make oneself room”; again, rydja sér til rikis = “to clear the way to a kingdom, i.e., to conquer it”; and III, “to clear one’s way, to make great havoc — to throng, to crowd.” I never can ignore the possible Scandinavian origin of any word, if it be in use in the east of England.

To give another instance. On one occasion I was reading in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, where that rascal is relating a lying tale to his foolish old mother of how he sprang on to the back of a wounded buck and galloped along the Gendin Edge, when suddenly

“paa en raadlös braabraet plet

for ivrejret rype-steggan

flaksed, kaglende, forskraemt

fra den knart, hvor han sad gemt

klods for bukkens fod paa eggen.”

“Steggan” did not appear in any Norwegian dictionary that I possessed at that time, though it is given in Iver Aasen’s Dictionary of Provincial Dialects, but I bethought me of Vigfussen, and I found “Steggr m. Steggi, a.m. (properly a mounter); in Yorkshire a steg is a gander, from stiga (to mount); a he bird, Andar Steggi a male duck,” &c. Therefore the lines translate:

“(All at once — at a desperate break-neck spot)

Rose a great cock ptarmigan,

Flapping, cackling, terrified,

From the crack where he lay hidden

(at the buck’s feet on the Edge).”

Had I not known from Miss Lawley (30 years ago) that the word “rouge” is in common use round Escrick, I might not have thought more about it; but as it is, I cannot agree that it is the same in sound and meaning as “scrooge” (pronounced scroodge) whereas “rouge” is pronounced exactly like the French equivalent of “red”.

As it may possibly interest some Old Etonians who know Scandinavia, I venture to send you this for what it may be worth.

I remain yours faithfully,

WILLIAM WARREN VERNON

A letter which gives some indication, perhaps, of the presumed readership of the newspaper and their interests in 1917. A rouge is a scoring play in Eton’s Field Game, an ancestor of soccer. Some scholars have seen a link between the attritional nature of it and Eton’s other unique sport the Wall Game, the preponderance of Etonian generals in the First World War and the strategy of grim slogging used for much of the conflict.

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Unmarried Mother

25 February 1918

Sir, Mr Galsworthy, in his article in to-day’s Times on “The Nation’s Young Lives,” strongly advocates the adoption of widows’ or mothers’ pensions, and the proper protection and care of unmarried girl mothers and their illegitimate children. His words are opportune. No amount of Welfare Centres can do anything radical to help the children of widows or those born out of wedlock, until the State has awakened to its grave responsibility for their welfare.

I have, within the last two days, been present at a meeting of a committee of women Poor Law Guardians in one of our great provincial cities. They were engaged, no doubt unconsciously, in a game which, for want of a better name, I must call girl-baiting. I saw a young expectant mother cruelly handled, and tortured with bitter words and threats; an ordeal which she will have had to endure at the hands of four different sets of officials by the time her baby is three weeks old. These guardians told her, in my presence, that they hoped she would suffer severely for her wrong-doing, that they considered that her own mother, who had treated her kindly, had been too lenient, and that her sin was so great that she ought to be ashamed to be a cost to self-respecting ratepayers.

They added that the man who was responsible for her condition was very good to have acknowledged his paternity, but expressed the belief, nay, rather the hope, that he would take an early opportunity of getting out of his obligation. Meanwhile, a pale, trembling girl, within a month of her confinement, stood, like a hunted animal, in the presence of such judges.

We pray constantly in our churches for “all women labouring of child, sick persons, and young children, the fatherless, the widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed,” and yet we continue this oppression of the desolate.

Yours faithfully,

DOROTHEA IRVING

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air sewage

1 November 1918

Sir, Few of us can do more than pass a very short period of the day in the open air. In a country in which a large proportion of the inhabitants spend most of their lives in industrial occupations, it is wiser to teach them the importance of introducing fresh air into their houses than to urge them to the impossible duty of spending much of their time out of doors.

If we devote, on average, eight hours to sleep, then a third at least of our 24-hour day is spent indoors, and each individual who reaches 60 years of life will have passed no less than 20 years of his existence in the one and only room where he is likely to be sole arbiter of the ventilation. Unless there are exceptional conditions, the windows of every sleeping room should be wide open all night and every night. The blinds should be drawn up, otherwise, from their valve-like action, they will only permit intermittent and uncertain ingress of fresh air, while the only egress for devitalized air is by the inadequate route of the chimney. The hours of night should also be employed for regularly and continuously flushing all day-rooms, where sewage air is manufactured in such quantities that it is never adequately scavenged during working hours. I know of crowded offices where the ventilation is imperfect through the day, and where the windows are all religiously closed up every night, so that the next morning the workers start by breathing more or less sewage air. The windows of many workrooms, hotels, schools, banks, churches and clubs are regularly “shut up for the night”. It has been shown that the sense of fatigue is more the consequence of breathing devitalized and stagnant air than of any other single factor. There is no harm in a room or railway carriage being warmed, if the air is regularly changed as it is used up. Scavenging our air sewage ensures a supply of fresh air. It is our chief safeguard against the onset or severity of influenza. The possibility of “a draught” — still a bogy to many — is best avoided by remembering that doors should be kept closed and windows kept open.

In 1867 Ruskin wrote: “A wholesome taste for cleanliness and fresh air is one of the final attainments of humanity.” Let us hope that this attainment may be advanced by the lessons of science applied in the present epidemic.

ST. CLAIR THOMSON

The letter was written during the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak. An estimated 20 million to 50 million people died worldwide.

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doing your bit

24 June 1919

Sir, It is now a truism to say that in August 1914, the nation was face to face with the greatest crisis in her history. She was saved by the free will offerings of her people. The best of her men rushed to the colours; the best of her women left their homes to spend and be spent; the best of her older men worked as they had never worked before, to a common end, and with a sense of unity and fellowship as new as it was exhilarating. It may be that in four and half years the ideals of many became dim, but the spiritual impetus of those early days carried the country through to the end.

To-day on the eve of peace, we are faced with another crisis, less obvious but none the less searching. The whole country is exhausted. By natural reaction, not unlike that which led to the excesses of the Restoration after the reign of the Puritans, all classes are in danger of being submerged on a wave of extravagance and materialism. It is so easy to live on borrowed money; so difficult to realise that you are doing so.

It is so easy to play; so hard to learn that you cannot play for long without work. A fool’s paradise is only the ante-room to a fool’s hell.

How can a nation be made to understand the gravity of the financial situation; that love of country is better than love of money?

This can only be done by example and the wealthy classes have to-day an opportunity of service which can never recur.

They know the danger of the present debt; they know the weight of it in the years to come. They know the practical difficulties of a universal statutory capital levy. Let them impose upon themselves, each as he is able, a voluntary levy. It should be possible to pay to the Exchequer within twelve months such a sum as would save the tax payer 50 millions a year.

I have been considering this matter for nearly two years, but my mind moves slowly; I dislike publicity, and I had hoped that somebody else might lead the way. I have made as accurate an estimate as I am able of the value of my own estate, and have arrived at a total of about £580,000. I have decided to realize 20% of that amount or say £120,000 which will purchase £150,000 of the new War Loan, and present it to the Government for cancellation.

I give this portion of my estate as a thank-offering in the firm conviction that never again shall we have such a chance of giving our country that form of help which is so vital at the present time.

Yours, etc.,

F.S.T.

The writer refers to ‘the eve of peace’ as the letter was written a few days before the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919.

The initials F.S.T. stood for Financial Secretary to the Treasury — Stanley Baldwin, who would become prime minister for the first time in 1923. His net worth was equivalent to about £50 million now. The scheme he proposed does not appear to have caught on.

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Here’s how

15 July 1919

Sir, Will you permit an elderly man, who is not a politician nor a public character, but merely an individual among millions of honest, sober persons whose liberty is attacked by a moral tyranny, to state an opinion with regard to the crusade which is being started against moderate drinkers?

It is not needed even in the cause of morality. That drunkenness has not entirely ceased is obvious, but that it is rapidly declining, from the natural action of civilization, is equally obvious. When I was a child, even in the country village where I was brought up, excess in drinking was patent in every class of society. Now, in my very wide circle of various acquaintances, I do not know of one single man or woman who is ever seen “under the influence of liquor”. Why not leave the process of moderation, so marked within 60 years, to pursue its normal course?

It is untrue to say that a limited and reasonable use of alcohol is injurious to mind, or body, or morality. My father, whose life was one of intense intellectual application, and who died, from the result of an accident, in his 79th year, was the most rigidly conscientious evangelical I have ever known.

He would have been astonished to learn that his claret and water at his midday meal, and his glass of Constantia when he want to bed, were either sinful in themselves or provocative to sin in others. There is no blessing upon those who invent offences for pleasure of giving pain and who lay burdens wantonly on the liberty of others. We have seen attempts by the fantastically righteous to condemn those who eat meat, who go to see plays, those who take walks on Sundays. The campaign against the sober use of wine and beer is on a footing with these efforts, and should be treated as they have been. Already tobacco is being forbidden to the clergy!

The fact that Americans are advertised as organizing and leading the campaign should be regarded with alarm. It must, I think, be odious to all right-thinking Americans in America. We do not express an opinion, much less do we organize a propaganda against “dryness” in the United States. The conditions of that country differ extremely from our own. It is not for us to interfere in their domestic business. If Englishmen went round America urging Americans to defy their own laws and revolt against their national customs, we should be very properly indignant. Let crusading Americans be taught the same reticence. It was never more important than it is now for Great Britain and the United States to act in harmony, and to respect each the habits and prejudices of the other.