British politics, 1917-1918

British politics, 1917-1918

This week's chapter examines Mr Lloyd George's government, the War Cabinet, electoral reform, the Irish Convention, the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia commissions, the India cotton duties, Indian constitutional reforms, the Corn Production Act, the Stockholm conference, the Lansdowne letter, war aims, unity of command, the "sniping" debates, the last Military Service Act, the Irish conscription clause, the Maurice letter and debate, the Education Act, the biggest Budget, the general election, the reconstructed government

It took a long time for British politicians to recognize that strategic unity was a fundamental condition of victory, and the controversy which raged around the question in the latter part of 1917 and the first months of 1918 gave rise to a remarkable series of discussions in the House of Commons which came to be known as "sniping" debates

Lords vote for woman suffrage january 11, 1918

Lord Curzon wound up the debate with a tremendous onslaught on the principle of woman suffrage. He described the proposed change as vast, incalculable, and catastrophic, without precedent in history and without justification in experience

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lords-vote-for-woman-suffrage-dfh8qrbpz?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter_118&utm_medium=email&utm_content=118_18.07.2018%20Politics%20(1)&CMP=TNLEmail_118918_3777337_118 From The Times, January 10, 1918

The House of Lords tonight rejected Lord Loreburn’s amendment to the Reform Bill opening the Parliamentary franchise to women by 134 votes to 71 — a majority of 63. The debate attracted the largest House since the beginning of the war. There were more women than men in the seats allotted to the public, and there has not been such a large attendance of peeresses in the side galleries since the far-off days of party conflict.
The Lord Chancellor, in resuming the debate, said what made him anxious was the possible effect of enfranchising 6,000,000 women for a General Election during the war. There would be a mass of women without political experience upon which pacifists might work.
Lord Selborne followed. The cost of carrying the amendment would involve the rejection of the Bill and, in the climax of the war, would split the nation from top to bottom. In the whole of his political experience no measure had been stamped with such unanimous national approval. He regretted the suggestion of the Lord Chancellor that women would be likely to be a prey to pacifists.

The Archbishop of Canterbury strongly supported the women’s claim. He did not base his case on rewarding women for having done well in the war. It was rather a recognition of the part that women were now taking in our national life. Lord Lytton asked bluntly whether women were to be told again that they must remain in the same category as lunatics and children.

Lord Curzon wound up the debate with a tremendous onslaught on the principle of woman suffrage. He described the proposed change as vast, incalculable, and catastrophic, without precedent in history and without justification in experience. He even ventured on a prediction that before many years were past the influence of women voters would not be Conservative but Socialistic, to the disturbance of home life. He could not conceal that to cut the clause out of the Bill would be a challenge to the House of Commons, and that the House of Lords was not likely to prevail. In these circumstances he proposed to abstain. The division was then taken, and the announcement of the figures was received with a round of cheering — an unusual manifestation in the House of Lords. 

100 Years Ago - Russia, Italy, women's rights

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-03-07/register/equal-pay-for-equal-work-r8s63hxzh

march 7, 1918

Equal pay for equal work

The refusal of the London County Council to accept the scale of teachers’ salaries drafted by its Education Committee is an incident of more than professional significance. Of the 20,000 teachers employed by the Council a large majority are women, and the proportion has increased during the war. A petition signed by over 10,000 of these women — in other words, a practically unanimous petition — protested against the differentiation made in the proposed scales between the salaries of men and of women, and demanded “equal pay for equal work”. The consequence was that when the proposals came before the Council for approval on Tuesday they were rejected by a large majority.
This demand for equal pay has long been a principal plank in the platform of women’s organizations, but hitherto the policy has made little headway. It has not even been endorsed by the National Union of Teachers, the majority of whose 90,000 members are women. The rejection of a scale which embodied the usual differentiation and was proposed by the largest and most powerful education authority in the country was therefore an unexpected and emphatic victory for the women’s claim. The rejection is not an endorsement of that claim, but the claim must now come up for decision. Nor will it escape notice that the success, so far as it goes, synchronizes very closely with the extension of the Parliamentary vote to women.

The merits of the claim to equal pay for equal work have been argued interminably. We do not propose to continue the argument beyond saying that, if logically the claim is difficult to contest, provided that the work be really equal, in practical life a woman earning, for example, £200 a year is normally far better off than a man with the same salary. But there is one question which we have never seen clearly put. If the employer is compelled to pay the same salary to a woman as to a man, will he not choose a man in the majority of appointments open to either sex? If so, women who establish their claim to equal pay at a time when men are scarce will have closed the door to their employment in normal conditions. By an apparent victory they will have done grave disservice to their cause.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-03-06/register/bullets-instead-of-food-2969tns0d

march 6, 1918

Bullets instead of food

Yesterday an aeroplane flew over Petrograd and made people rather nervous, lest it might be German. In the evening a report circulated that bombs had been dropped, causing the death of three persons and injuries to five others. During the last four months we have been liable to be hit at any time of the day or night by stray bullets fired by bad marksmen or by drunken rioters. I have a hole in my bedroom window from a bullet that was evidently not aimed either at the window or at me. There are streets which have suffered so severely that Petrograd is called the “City of Broken Windows”. It costs too dear to repair them at the present extortionate prices, and there are no glaziers to do the work.

In all probability the majority of the victims in the two Revolutions were accidentally struck down. In one of the hospitals, in which my daughter was helping with wounded soldiers, a washerwoman who had the temerity to look out of a window during a fusillade in the street below was shot dead. Thousands of bodies have been dragged out of the canals and rivers. A slouching soldier or a drunken hooligan coming in your direction might be meditating how to strip you naked. Wine shops and cellars were broken into every day. When the crowd became very drunk and dangerous “Red Guards” appeared on the scene and shot them down. Fine old wines could be bought from soldiers at high prices.
A number of English refugees from the cotton mills at Narva arrived here a few days ago, en route for the United Kingdom. The route via Finland is now closed, and news from British travellers by way of the Murman coast is not encouraging. A large party of British subjects, with women and children, is held up at Petrosavodsk with hardly anything to eat and unable to proceed farther. The scarcity of food in Petrograd has become a real famine. Two-thirds of the shops are shut up, and the others are empty of goods. The banks, which now all belong to the Socialist Communistic Government, allow clients to draw only a small amount of money once a week, so that we often have no money for food when it can be obtained, or when we have money there is no food. It is not surprising that so many Petrograd Russians look forward to the coming of the Germans as a not altogether unmixed evil.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-03-02/register/all-night-bombing-of-venice-50s02ndgk

march 2, 1918

All-night bombing of Venice

Last night saw the greatest air raid of the 45 that Venice has endured. It lasted eight hours and there was not an interval of more than half an hour during all that time of brilliant moonlight in which bombs were not falling on the city. Three hundred were thrown in all, 38 houses were smashed, the Royal Palace struck, a home for old men and women blown to pieces, and three churches damaged — St John and St Paul, St Simeon the Less, and St John Chrysostom, in the last of which an altar with one of Cellini’s last landscapes was wrecked. About 15 civilians were wounded, including two women, seriously. Only one man was killed, thanks to the promptness with which the Venetians now take shelter in refuges and also to the fact that only some 60,000 of the normal population of 160,000 remain.

The same machines returned again and again, bringing fresh cargoes of bombs through the night. Venice is only a few minutes’ flight from the Austrian lines, and the raiders evidently have a bomb dump close behind their trenches. The journey both ways and the taking on board of more bombs seem to require about 25 minutes, which was the average length of the intervals.
As several aeroplanes took part in the raid, the sinister drone of the approaching propellers across the lagoon and the shattering crash of bursting bombs recurred almost every ten minutes. Scattering bombs over inhabited towns is a brutal business anywhere, but in Venice it is sacrilege. For here it is practically impossible to drop bombs without destroying or injuring beyond repair beautiful buildings. The Austrians, and recently their German allies, have thrown in all about a thousand high-explosive bombs upon the city with a cynical disregard of whether they might strike the Doge’s Palace, a tiny shop, or, by an outside chance, some building which could plausibly have some vague military use.
As it is Venice will never lose the scars which the Vandals have made. The Scalzi Church on the Grand Canal was destroyed months ago with its frescoed roof by Tiepolo: a white stone five yards from the doors of St Mark’s records where another bomb just failed to smash those gorgeous golden Byzantine mosaics which no covering with timbers and sandbags can protect, and which cannot be carried to a place of safety.

100 Years Ago - Women and War

FORESTRY:' MEASURING UP TIMBER

A WARD IN ENDELL STREET HOSPITAL,

Run exclusively by women.

DA ME KATHERINE F URSE WITH COMMANDER SIR R. W. BULKELEY, R.N. R.,

Inspect ing Officers of the W.R.N.S. drafted for Service

A ROUTE MARCH OF W.A.A.C.'S IN FRANCE


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/our-women-in-france-dsv0lvgd5?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter_118&utm_medium=email&utm_content=118_February%2007,%202018&CMP=TNLEmail_118918_2889024_118

Our women in France

Some of the women who worked at an ordnance office about a mile from the camp, had set out like soldiers that morning with their rations of “bully” and tea and sugar in their pack

November 21, 1917

It was a drizzling morning, wintry and wet, at a certain port in France. Crowds of men on leave carne off the boat and were met by the Military Landing Officer and sent to their destinations. A distinguished civilian or two, looking the worse for wear, slipped off, and then came the little company of WAAC’s, an officer at their head, neat in their warm khaki coats over their khaki coat-frocks, their stout brown shoes, and their new serviceable pull-on felt hats, each with her soldierlike pack on her neat back.
The WAAC Area Controller and the Disembarcation Officer came forward to welcome them; the NCO or forewoman of the group saw to the luggage, which was piled on an Army lorry by willing Tommies, and then in brick military formation, four deep, they marched off to the waterside hostel, an annexe to the Soldiers’ Institute, where a hot meal awaited them and where they were to stay the night. Already they had been made free of the soldiers’ buffets at home, and at the port from which they had sailed they had had their last meal in England at a soldiers’ restroom, where two “full” corporals hastened to wait on them, telling all whom it might concern that they were “the Waacs of France” - a friendly send-off to women starting off into a new and unknown life.

As they passed through the wistful French town poilus, with the hoods of their weather capes pulled over their caps, looked at them curiously, and an occasional Frenchwoman not yet used to the novelty of them glanced their way with a “comme elles sont gentilles, ces petites soldates.” Otherwise France took them as a matter of course. A night at the waterside hostel, sleeping on the floor on army “biscuits” - as they had already learned to call the military mattress - and then up betimes in the morning under orders only then revealed to them from one of the bases.
Some of them were cooks, some telegraphists, and a few motor-drivers. Through pleasant France, with its hedgeless, well-cultivated fields and here and there a poilu in “civvies” spending his leave cultivating his land, or a group of women gleaners sharply silhouetted against the sky; through country that wise Napoleon had planted with the economic tree; or through the cider-apple country they went their several ways to hostels or billets in historic towns or to great camps filled with the caterpillar-like Nissen huts.
STREETS OF HUTS.

A party was going to the farnous Queen Mary’s camp at the greatest base of all - and with them I came to spend a night in their camp. Little streets of huts stretched before us as we arrived, the pavement by them shielded from the weathers - for no WAAC may carry an umbrella - so that the business of life went on though the rain fell. Around the camp was a high barbed-wire fence. A warm and plentiful meal wvas ready for the new arrivals, the food being L of C (Lines of Communication) rations, the same as the men.
Their damp coats were taken and hung in the drying shed. In the distance they could hear the bugle calls from the men’s camp; from the YWCA hut near by the sounds of a Waac Company going through their 20 minutes’ weekly drill, and when it ceased it was followed by the tune of a well-known waltz played by one of the girls who had been writing letters at one of the YWCA writing tables. The women who had been drilling joined in and danced until soon after there came the camp call to supper, and then in their various ways the Waacs amused themselves until it was time to go to bed, some going out in groups to concerts for which they had passes.
The newcomers unpacked their possessions, turned out their four Army blankets, made up their beds, stood their footwear “at attention” facing the door, pinned up their family photos, put away their few possessions, for they travel mobile with as little luggage as a soldier, and then sat on their beds for a good talk with their room-mates or an impromptu party on parcels from home.
In the mess rooms supper was still going on. Some of the women who worked at an ordnance office about a mile from the camp, and had set out like soldiers that morning with their rations of “bully” and tea and sugar in their pack, as it was too far to come home to dinner, were having a late evening meal. In the sick-bay the VAD was dosing some of the Waacs who had pains due to parcels from home, or colds, or who had met with some minor accident.
At the administrators’ mess the women who hold the responsibility for the discipline and good conduct of the rank and file were relaxing after their strenuous day. They told with great pride of rations under-drawn, and money in lieu of them to be used for luxuries of fresh milk (only tinned is supplied as a ration), fruit, and vegetables for the girls. Extra money is also made by the saving of fat, which is sold for conversion into munitions. In a month £9 10s was made in one camp on this item.
The evening meal over, the administrators talk for a while on points arising out of the day’s work. In the Army. there are no such words as “I don’t know,” but the innovation of the Waac is constantly causing some such answer to problems that must be worked out by the base commandant in company with the unit administrators. Of all the administrators the letter censor has the most varying task, for the Waac writes two letters to the soldier’s one. She invited me to come with her to her Nissen hut with its cosy glowing French stove, while she went through her great basket of letters. The censoring, though the letters seemed to include two or three from every girl in the camp, was quickly done. The Censor’s basket gradually grew less, an administrator or two popped In to ask about passes for a concert to which the women were invited, another to raise a point of discipline, of complaints from a group of Waacs, whose forewoman marched them along the road instead of on the pavement, which they preferred, to their work. But as no foot-passengers could shop when a company of Waacs four abreast with a forewoman at intervals bore down on the town, the point was decided in favour of the forewoman.
The assistant administrator, with a genius for dietary and making the best of Army rations, left in a week’s diet sheet to be typed next day, and here it is. From the Chief Controller downwards all the women in camp live on rations, and while in camp I grew as fond as they were of Army fare. The censor’s basket was finally emptied. The tired AA turned in, and I too went back to my comfortable billet in a Nissen hut, and the little town fell asleep save for the watching guard.

100 Years Ago - Bolshevism; Women's Suffrage

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/lords-vote-for-woman-suffrage-dfh8qrbpz

january 11, 1918

Lords vote for woman suffrage

The House of Lords tonight rejected Lord Loreburn’s amendment to the Reform Bill opening the Parliamentary franchise to women by 134 votes to 71 — a majority of 63. The debate attracted the largest House since the beginning of the war. There were more women than men in the seats allotted to the public, and there has not been such a large attendance of peeresses in the side galleries since the far-off days of party conflict.
The Lord Chancellor, in resuming the debate, said what made him anxious was the possible effect of enfranchising 6,000,000 women for a General Election during the war. There would be a mass of women without political experience upon which pacifists might work.
Lord Selborne followed. The cost of carrying the amendment would involve the rejection of the Bill and, in the climax of the war, would split the nation from top to bottom. In the whole of his political experience no measure had been stamped with such unanimous national approval. He regretted the suggestion of the Lord Chancellor that women would be likely to be a prey to pacifists.

The Archbishop of Canterbury strongly supported the women’s claim. He did not base his case on rewarding women for having done well in the war. It was rather a recognition of the part that women were now taking in our national life. Lord Lytton asked bluntly whether women were to be told again that they must remain in the same category as lunatics and children.

Lord Curzon wound up the debate with a tremendous onslaught on the principle of woman suffrage. He described the proposed change as vast, incalculable, and catastrophic, without precedent in history and without justification in experience. He even ventured on a prediction that before many years were past the influence of women voters would not be Conservative but Socialistic, to the disturbance of home life. He could not conceal that to cut the clause out of the Bill would be a challenge to the House of Commons, and that the House of Lords was not likely to prevail. In these circumstances he proposed to abstain. The division was then taken, and the announcement of the figures was received with a round of cheering — an unusual manifestation in the House of Lords.

100 Years Ago - Russia

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/russian-warships-trapped-2cf6ljdjh

october 19, 1917

Russian warships trapped

The latest news of the German enterprise in the Eastern Baltic indicates its complete success. The occupation of Oesel Island has been effected, apparently without great loss. The Russian naval forces were too few and too weak to withstand the German squadrons. With the fall of the coastal batteries on the Sverbe Peninsula the passage of the Irben Channel was forced. The heavier German ships were then able to enter the Gulf of Riga.
Considering the relative strength of the opposed forces, the result must have been a foregone conclusion. The heavy guns in the German Dreadnoughts would outrange and overpower the armaments of the older Russian vessels. The Slava, which has already figured in several engagements in the Gulf, was sunk after a gallant stand against the superior enemy. That two other large Russian vessels should have escaped was due to their retirement into the Moon Sound, but even there they may not find safety.
It is probable that the Russian minefields will, for a little time, offer an impediment to the German ships. When, however, these obstructions are swept away, it is unlikely to be long before all the islands are taken.
It is clear that the failure of the Baltic Fleet to put in an appearance when the strength of the German force became known in Petrograd was the primary cause of the loss of the islands. A couple of old battleships, with the assistance of a flotilla of destroyers and gunboats, could not be expected, even with a display of the most stubborn courage, to withstand the formidable squadrons to which they were opposed. That this little division of the Russian Fleet sacrificed itself in an attempt to delay the enemy is a high tribute to its gallantry and patriotism. That it was not reinforced from the fleet in the Gulf of Finland was due, it must be supposed, to the loss of discipline brought about by the Revolution.

The stirring appeal of M Kerensky to the fleet appears to have been of little avail. The mastery of the Gulf of Riga lays open to German enterprise the whole of Esthonia’s eastern shores. If anything like a normal condition of efficiency can be restored to the Baltic Fleet, it may yet be capable of offering opposition to the advance of the Germans in the Gulf of Finland.

100 Years Ago - The Army Medical Service and the New Medicine

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/open-air-cure-for-soldiers-9rrtkkd9h?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter_118&utm_medium=email&utm_content=118_October%2004,%202017&CMP=TNLEmail_118918_2349394_118

THE DOCTOR WRITES A LETTER FOR A WOUNDED MAN

OPEN-AIR TREATMENT AT ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL

OUTSIDE AN ADVANCED DRESSING STATION

A ' WARD ,IN ENDELL STREET HOSPITAL.

" 'This 'hospital was' staffed -entirely bywomen

Open air cure for soldiers

Protection from the weather is given by verandahs with glazed roofs and sides, but quite open in front, though in extreme weather further protection is afforded by sailcloth screens

December 27, 1916

A correspondent writes: When the open-air wards at Dollis Hill House Hospital, designed by Mr A Saxon Snell were opened for soldier patients last July, doubts were expressed as to their salubrity and comfort in winter. A visit to the hospital, even under the present wintry conditions, showed the value of the open-air principle when applied with certain modifications that have been absent from some examples of military hospitals without windows.
The huts are made of asbestos sheets in wooden frames, with rubberoid roofing. There is aso an open verandah ward. One hut has a south-east aspect, and the other, with the verandah, faces due south. Coke stoves provide the heating, and protection from the weather is given by verandahs 6ft wide with glazed roofs and sides, but quite open in front, though in extreme and boisterous weather and during evening and morning dressings on winter days, further protection is afforded by sailcloth screens.
Patients transferred from the Endell-street Military Hospital, to which Dollis Hill House is auxiliary, quickly lose their pallor and regain their powers of sleep. Healing of wounds, clearing up of lung troubles, and restoration of what we called “tone” are also rapid.
Patients sit quite contentedly in the open-air huts, even when snow falls, although the recreation room in the main building stands is always available.

Charles Saatchi's Great Masterpieces: Frida Kahlo's The Two Fridas and the tragic story that lies behind it

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/charles-saatchis-great-masterpieces-frida-kahlosthe-two-fridas/


It is little wonder that Hollywood turned its lenses on to the turbulent melodrama of Frida Kahlo’s life.
Had she been the invention of a screenwriter, a film studio would have considered it too overwrought a tale for the audience to suspend disbelief.
But as she herself once explained: “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”
The Two Fridas was completed shortly after her divorce from the acclaimed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He passionately encouraged her to paint autobiographically, with works inspired by events in her life.
Diego was convinced that “she is the first woman in the history of art to treat, with absolute and uncompromising honesty, one might even say with impassive cruelty, those general and specific themes which exclusively affect women”.



The Two Fridas, 1939, Oil on canvas by Frida Kahlo Credit:  Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City

Re The Handmaid’s Tale

Нещодавно випустили нову екранізацію вищезгаданої книги, і от у NYRB рецензія
(неприхильна) на нього




А я от колись коротко згадував про власне враження, в зв'язку з тим, що книга була потрапила у перелік 25 книг, що на думку Таймс, кожен має прочитати




Останньою позицією:

25. The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood 1985

Sci-fi meets feminism in Atwood’s revolutionary, genre-busting 1985 novel. The result is the kind of book that simply refuses to go away, lingering spookily at the back of the mind even decades after reading. It’s quite the most beautifully written piece of patriarchy-blaming ever published and the deserving winner of many prizes. Set in Gilead, a futuristic dictatorship where America has been taken over by a misogynistic cult based on the total subjugation of women through financial, social and reproductive control, this terrifying parable is told by Offred, one of the “handmaids” used only for reproduction by the military elite. Offred’s world is replete with queasy details of the way women’s bodies (not to mention babies) are co-opted by the regime, and the underlying Christian schema of the oppressors makes it all the more hideous. Not to mention controversial: the American Christian Right have been up in arms about this bombshell of a book for years, and it’s easy to see why. With the current debate over women’s right not to give Jesus-loving legislators control over their reproductive systems, Atwood’s mesmerising parable seems more vital than ever.

What to say: What do women want? Not rapey enslavement, mostly

Ну й відповідно:

Колись давно, ще як я був студіозусом у Празі, дивилися ми екранізацію цієї книги. Мені було сподобалося, і я не зрозумів, чому колєжанка висловилася в тому плані що поганий фільм (не як кіно - хоча, чесно кажучи, не шедевр, а ідеологічно). Щиро не зрозумів, і здивувався, ніби ж все правильно, "хороші побєждають"



Але через якийсь час я її зрозумів, і згодився. Зрозуміло, чому ця книга отримує високі оцінки "культурної еліти" - вона просякнута тією ж ненавистю до християнства, що й сама еліта. Відповідно, художні якості книги, емпатія, яку відчуваєш до протагоністки - лише збільшує шкоду від книги. Rot sets in - але може й зникнути, як, я сподіваюся, в моєму випадку



Взагалі бувають в житті такі епізоди, які начебто консервують назавжди власний ментальний стан, який взагалі вже пройшов, минувся. От як у цьому випадку, пам'ятаючи власну реакцію, я можу реконструювати свій тодішній світогляд, суттєво відмінний від поточного.
 

Або, скажімо, акцент: у першому класі, коли ми проходили глухі й дзвінкі приголосні, я "всьо пойняв", ну там Б - П, Ж - Ш - і страшенно здивувався, коли моя відповідь, що парна глуха до Г буде Х вчителькою (царство їй небесне, Паолі Йосипівні) була не прийнята як правильна. І я довго розмірковував, мовляв, як же так, до Г парна глуха це К... І запротоколював ментально під рубрикою "понять нєвозможно, нада запомніть"...

100 Years Ago in the papers: Russia and women's suffrage

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/100-000-men-at-once-xsgc3zvlr

March 30, 1917

100,000 men at once

Mr Bonar Law made a grave statement on the urgency of the manpower problem in moving the second reading of the new Military Service Bill in the House of Commons today. It was the opinion of the Government, he said, that the Bill, which provides for a new examination of discharged and rejected men, was an absolute necessity in view of the present military situation. He explained that arrangements were made last autumn for the provision of men for the present campaign on a certain scale. That anticipation had not been fulfilled, because the Cabinet found the needs at home so pressing that for a time those in the Army had to give way. He thought it right to tell the House that the recruits obtained since the beginning of the year had fallen short by 100,000.
The House agreed that such a falling-off was serious. Members, however, were glad to hear that the deficiency had been made good to a degree by the taking of fit men formerly behind the lines for the fighting line. Relief had also come from the greater use of the services of women. A deficiency still existed, and the Army felt that unless it could be made good our prospects in the coming campaign would be jeopardized. The Bill to which Mr Bonar Law asked the assent of the House, would enable the military authorities to deal with 1,000,000 men, and their estimate was that at least 100,000 recruits would be forthcoming within the next three months. The Government recognized the hardship which the Bill would impose on individuals, but the war had reached such a point that the only principle that could be recognized was that every man who was found fit to go into the fighting line should be there, unless his services were required for needs of equal importance at home. He was sorry to say a considerable number of men had succeeded in avoiding service by something like fraud.
Mr Bonar Law stated that one reason why the falling off of recruits had not had the disastrous results it might have had was that our casualties so far this year had been less than anticipated. Still, a time of great fighting with terrible casualties was in front of us, and the whole value of this year’s campaign might depend on our being able to drive home any success we might achieve.

100 Years Ago - Gorizia, Egypt and taxis

100 Years Ago - the Great War and Votes for Women

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-01-28/register/famine-with-plenty-in-russia-kmphx76xk

january 28, 1917

Famine with plenty in Russia

Russia is experiencing famine in the midst of plenty. The scarcity of food is the one thing talked of throughout the land. Last summer the poorer people took up their positions outside the Petrograd municipal meat shops at 10 o’clock in the evening. The sun had hardly set over the Elagin Island, where fashion and wealth enjoyed their ease and the wonders of the white nights, before the poor, basket in hand, began their weary vigil. Some waited 10 and 12 hours for a morsel of meat. Since then we have seen queues become the rule — for meat, for bread, for milk, for vegetables, for sugar, people wait in long “tails”. Rich and poor participate, the latter in person, the former by proxy through their servants. With the thermometer sometimes at 20 below zero Fahrenheit, people have to wait hours outside each shop to get daily necessities. The writer of this article saw a “tail” of more than 1,200 people outside the cooperative shop for railway employees at Kosloff waiting for white flour. Kosloff had then been without flour for 10 days, though half a dozen of the largest flour-mills in Russia are within a 250-mile radius of the town.


Probably there is sufficient food in the country to feed the population for the next two years. The problem to solve is how to distribute it. The Department of Provisions has borne the burden of supplying the Armies in the field since July, 1915. As time went on the deficiency in provisioning the civil population increased. The Ministry of Trade and Industry considered the question and appointed committees, but there the matter rested. Now its efforts have completely ceased.


Throughout the war the railways have supplied the Army with all that is needed or was available. This shows some organization; but it was done at the expense of starving traffic to the capitals and large provincial towns. With thorough, or even partially, efficient organization the great towns and manufacturing centres could have been supplied with all necessities in sufficient quantities if ordinary care had been taken in the use of goods trucks. Organization and co-ordination are, however, essential if Russia is to cope with her food problem; and it is for this reason that the absence of a strong, capable, and united Ministry has been felt during the past year.