https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/prisoners-terrible-plight-qxw3wkf6t
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-11-15/register/the-general-election-t9p83t5bh
Yours obediently,
Ethel MM McKenna, 24 Bryanston Square, W, Nov 9.
NOVEMBER 16, 1918
Prisoners’ terrible plight
I understand that, according to programme, the British Army is remaining stationary within its lines till the expiration of the six days from the signing of the armistice, which will expire at 11 o’clock on Sunday. The forward movement will then begin. Today German officers arrived at Mons for the purpose of putting railway and other facilities at our disposal for our advance.
The released British prisoners, who, having been merely turned loose from camps or left to their own devices, are pouring in on foot, mostly in a deplorable condition. They are generally dressed in a sort of prison uniform of black cloth, and wear German caps, having often little or no underclothing, though the cold is severe. They are terribly wasted and in an unwashed and unshaven condition, with untrimmed hair, and are sometimes a pitiable sight. They are being treated with the utmost kindness by civilians of the villages along the road in the area evacuated by the Germans, and, of course, as soon as they reach our lines they are helped to divisional rest camps or other havens by being given lifts in lorries. Nonetheless, many are said to be finding the journey on foot too much for them, even though they have less than a 10-mile walk, and I understand some have actually died on the road at the very moment of deliverance.
All alike tell the same tales of rough usage, hard work, generally in some war industry, with insufficient food, to which their condition bears ample witness. Some have aged and others shrunk to youths of half their real age, with thin, wasted limbs and fleshless bodies. It is a pity the whole civilized world cannot see these men side by side with German prisoners in our hands.
Some of those now liberated have been prisoners a long time. Many others were captured at Cambrai a year ago, and others taken in the La Bassée area last April, but even the seven months of treatment they have received has been enough to reduce the last to a state of utter emaciation and feebleness. There is every evidence that the German food shortage has, especially of late, been even worse than we have dared believe, but that, even so, British prisoners have been famished far beyond any other class of the population there can be no doubt.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-11-15/register/the-general-election-t9p83t5bh
NOVEMBER 15, 1918
The general election
The long-expected announcement about the General Election was made by Mr Bonar Law in the House of Commons yesterday. He stated that the following dates had been fixed: Prorogation of Parliament (probably), Nov 20; Dissolution of Parliament, Nov 25; Nominations, Dec 4; Polling, Dec 14; Counting of Votes, Dec 21 or Dec 28.
The campaign will be opened with a great Coalition meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, tomorrow. Mr Lloyd George, Mr Bonar Law, and Mr Barnes will submit to the country a national programme on behalf of the Liberal, Unionist, and Labour wings of the Coalition. The Unionists have in the field over 300 candidates. The Coalition Liberals about 150, and the Asquith Liberals a rather larger number. At one time Labour had big ideas about the election, and there was talk of as many as 400 candidates from this party alone. Experts will be surprised if as many as half of this number proceed to nomination, each with the legal deposit of £150 in his hand.
It will be eight years almost to a day since the last General Election, and a forecast of the contest of 1910 was child’s play compared with one of December, 1918. The electoral position has been completely revolutionized by the war and the Reform Act. The Act has more than doubled the electorate, enfranchised women and soldiers, redistributed seats, and entirely remodelled the law relating to elections.
If there is one element more incalculable than another, it is the vote of the newly enfranchised women. Notwithstanding the age limit of 30 years, women constitute more than a third of the total electorate of about 20,000,000. Indeed, it is possible that at this election more women will vote than men, because of the physical difficulties which will stand in the way of the recording of their votes by soldiers and sailors on foreign service. Nobody has the remotest idea of the direction in which the thoughts of the women voters are turning. The absent voters, too, are an unknown quantity. Even the 8,000,000 men who were on the register for the last general election have learnt so much in the war that the party axis of vast numbers has been shifted to a degree which cannot be gauged with any accuracy.
NOVEMBER 14, 1918
Trench fever at home
The influenza epidemic has furnished an object lesson in the need of preventive medicine. It is to be hoped that this will not be disregarded, and that the danger which threatens from the introduction of “war diseases” into this country at demobilization will be anticipated and so averted. These diseases include dysentery, malaria, and trench fever, and while some steps have been taken in regard to the first two, we do not think that the importance of the last has as yet been grasped by the civil authorities. Yet trench fever is said to have affected upwards of half a million men, and its consequences in heart and nerve troubles have often proved disastrous. Its toll in morbidity is greater than that of any other disease of war. Nor can it be described as a war disease alone, for evidence exists that it was well known in the Middle Ages under the name of “the five-day fever”.
We suggest that this is a matter for the Ministry of Pensions rather than for the Army Medical Service. Many men suffering from chronic malaria and chronic trench fever are disabled and unfit for heavy work. They require financial help. Here is the opportunity of keeping them under medical observation, so that they may not, while still infective, become a danger to the health of others. Medical men who have specially studied the diseases in question, and who know what measures to recommend to avoid complications, should, in our opinion, be set to work at once. Meanwhile preventive action must be taken. Trench fever is carried by lice, malaria by the anopheles mosquito. Both these insects are plentiful in this country.
● 7,500 deaths from influenza
The gradual abatement of the influenza epidemic has not yet been reflected in a reduction in the death-roll, according to the latest figures. Contrary to expectation, the Registrar-Generals return, issued last evening, shows that in the 96 great towns of England and Wales (including London) the deaths attributed to influenza numbered 7,560, or 148 more than in the preceding week, when the epidemic was believed to be at its height. In three weeks the epidemic has caused 19,454 deaths, and in the county of London alone the total for the last three weeks exceeds 6,000.
NOVEMBER 13, 1918
The Graves Commission
To the Editor of The Times Sir, I trust you will allow me to enter a protest against the decision of the Imperial War Graves Commission. Some of the proposals are almost incredibly lacking in imagination, and I trust they will be reconsidered. The views of the Commission that “the Empire should hold it as a sacred obligation that the graves of those who have died for their country shall be preserved inviolate through future ages”, and that “no distinction shall be made between officers and men”, are admirable. But when one learns how these ideals are to be carried out, I can only express my repugnance, and am sure the proposals will offend rich and poor, officers and men, alike. It may be inadvisable, as the Commission say, to “leave the provision of memorials to private initiative”, as if they were erected according to the preference, taste, and means of relatives and friends the result would be that costly monuments put up by the well-to-do would contrast unkindly with those humbler ones which would be all the poorer folk could afford. The Commission truly and beautifully say that “those who have given their lives are members of one family and children of one mother”. They insist that “each grave shall have its regimental headstone, which shall be uniform in height” and “the headstones of regiments will be of the same pattern and material”. The result will be terrible. It will convert what should be beautiful resting-places for loved and honoured dead into dreary expanses of unlovely headstones, and will make these military burial places a blot on the countryside. To inflict this on our French and Belgian friends would be an offence against taste and courtesy. Surely the right and only way to obtain simplicity, equality, and beauty would be to make every such burying place a simple garden, without individual tablets or headstones, planted with trees and flowers, with the name and rank of all buried therein inscribed together on a tablet or monument. Such graveyards would then become places of peace and beauty, in which those in the neighbourhood, and the relatives, when they visit their dead, would find rest and comfort.
Yours obediently,
Ethel MM McKenna, 24 Bryanston Square, W, Nov 9.
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