Various War Notes (1914)

Post date: Jan 22, 2014 6:58:35 PM

Extract from November 1914 Parish Magazine marked as 3rd War Number

NOTES AND NOTICES.

Mr. Gustave Lemmens⁴ has just offered to give his 30 h.p. Humber car if The Times will accept it and if we will find the £40 required to furnish it as one of The Times' fleet of motor ambulance³ cars for the use of the British Red Cross Society or the St. John's Ambulance Association at the front. To raise the £40 the Vicarage children, with the help of the children of Barming Rectory and Clare House Malling, are arranging a Dramatic Entertainment which will be given in the Church Rooms on Wednesday, the 25th November. Particulars will be advertised shortly.

About one third of the garments made from the materials purchased by the Wateringbury Women's War Work Fund were despatched last month to the Red Cross Society, and the Committee have decided that of the remainder flannel vests and flannel day shirts should be sent forthwith to our Sailors' and Soldiers at the front, respectively, and all the rest of the things to the St. John's Ambulance Association. Of the balance announced in last month's Magazine, a sum of £1 6s. 10d. has been spent in handkerchiefs and other small items and the Committee has handed the final balance of £1 17s. 8d.. to Mrs. Livett, to be used in the purchase of materials for the Women's Working Party which she has organised for Monday afternoons (2.15 to 4 p.m.) during the winter months. Mrs. Livett will be glad to welcome further recruits for that party—it is not a Mothers' Meeting, but a working party for our Tommies and Jack Tars now serving at the front and on the high seas.

The following must be added to the " Navy & Army List" published in our last issue :

Stevens, 2nd Lieut. Henry Francis Bingham: 6th Batt. R.W.K. Regt (Regulars). Purfleet.

Gunner Robert Hook is on his way from India to the front, and Henry Hook, our Sexton, will soon have three sons in the Expeditionary Force, besides another in H.M.S. Iron Duke. Sergeant Alfred Cray (20th Hussars) has been wounded, not severely we are able to report, and is now in the Red Cross Hospital, Beckenham. There are still some omissions and mistakes in our list which we hope to correct next month.

Poor Belgium! That fair and prosperous country is wrecked by the ruthless methods of German warfare. Thousands of its people¹ have fled for safety to England and to Holland. Someday, we believe, they will be able to return thither and begin the stupendous task of rebuilding out of the ruin their homes and all that goes to make up national life; but they refuse to return now to build up a Germanized Belgium. Meantime Britain offers them a refuge within her sea-girt. borders. But since there is a real risk, indeed it has already been discovered, that German spies, masquerading as Belgian refugees, may be lurking in their ranks, the authorities demand that our Belgian guests should not be suffered to remain anywhere along our sea-coast or in our garrison and depot towns. The Borough of Maidstone, therefore cannot entertain them, but subject to registration, they are not to be excluded from neighbouring parishes. The Refugees' Committee is being approached, and it is probable we may soon have some at Wateringbury. A few parishioners are combining to see what can be done. Mr. Leney has lent one of his new cottages near the station, to be furnished by loan, for the use of a small family; and other people are offering lodging in their own houses, or donations to pay for board and lodging elsewhere.

It was a bit of bad leading on the part of the Germans that allowed the Belgian army to escape when Antwerp was taken. That army is showing its mettle in its defence of the river Yser against the attempts of the Germans, in obedience to the Kaiser's command, to take Calais. The taking of Antwerp and Calais were doubtless part of the original German scheme for invading England, but the fall of Paris was to come first. In fact, failure to establish themselves in France, a failure of which we are already assured, renders any success in those operations quite useless for any military purposes—the object is a purely political one, to frighten England and to bolster up the courage of their own people. They want it badly, for whatever happens now in France (and we have got the measure of them there ), unless they can pierce the Russian centre across the middle Vistula or the San, and can avoid having their left flank turned by the Russians from Warsaw (and the prospect of doing either does not seem very bright for them), their cause is lost.—[Note written October 23rd.]

We see that in the following List of this quarter's Library Books there appears General von Bernhardi's Germany and the next War² (written in 1911). Everyone ought to read this book: it proves the determination with which Germany has been for many years preparing for the Great War, and the reason which prompted her, namely that she might attain what the nation calls " world-dominion "; and also that she has always regarded England as the last and hardest nut she would have to crack. After Bernhardi a short book by the late Professor Cramb, of Oxford, entitled Germany & England, should be read.

The Wateringbury Library is open at the Church Rooms on Mondays from 4 to 5.00 p.m. It has 32 fresh books from London every Quarter. A volume may be taken out and kept for a fortnight for the sum of one penny.

[there follows list of library books].

Notes:

1. A.J.P.Taylor in his volume of the Oxford History of England (1914-1945) notes as follows: "The arrival of some hundred thousand Belgian refugees increased the hysteria. They brought stories of German atrocities -some true, most of them inflated by the heat of war; the violated nuns and the babies with their hands cut off were never found. The Belgians were given at first an emotional welcome. Lord Curzon entertained the king and queen at his country house; Lord Lonsdale provided for their horses as 'a further contribution to the national cause'. This sympathy did not last. Most of the refugees were ordinary working-class people, aggrieved at having been driven from their homes and resentful that Great Britain had not defended the neutrality of Belgium more adequately. Their competition was feared on the labour market. Before the war ended, the Belgians were far from popular."On atrocities recent research quoted by Sir Max Hastings in Catastrophe concludes " German policy-and policy it was- of seizing large numbers of hostages and murdering them wholesale in response to resistance, largely or wholly imagined, was unmatched in scale in Western Europe during that era."

2. General Friedrich von Bernhardi 's Germany and the Next War proclaimed a German "duty to make war ...War is a biological necessity of the first importance ..Without war, inferior or decaying races would easily choke the growth of healthy, budding elements and a universal decadence would follow.. Might gives the right to conquer or occupy" .Quoted by Sir Max Hastings in Catastrophe Europe goes to War 1914 (page 48) who notes that Bernhaldi was dismissed by Moltke as a "a perfect dreamer" but the book was widely noticed in Britain and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G.Wells were among those expressing repugnance.

3. The Times started an appeal for funds for ambulances in October 1914. See http://www.redcross.org.uk/~/media/BritishRedCross/Documents/Who%20we%20are/History%20and%20archives/British%20Red%20Cross%20transport%20during%20the%20First%20World%20War.pdf

For more on the Wateringbury ambulance see More letters from front (1915) , Vicar's review of war (1915) and (at the very end) Updated Navy and Army list (1915).

4. Gustave Lemmens was, according to the 1911 census born in Belgium in 1875 but in 1911 he was living at Ryde on the Isle of Wight.