The Dogger Bank Incident and the Road to World War

Newspaper Depiction of the Incident

The Dogger Bank incident (also known as the North Sea Incident or the "Russian Outrage") occurred on the night of 21–22 October, 1904, when the Baltic Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy mistakenly opened fire on British civilian fishing trawlers in the North Sea. Vice Admiral Admiral Rozhdestvensky's ships, of the Russian Baltic fleet, then coming off the coast of Norway, had received rumors from several sources of the presence of Japanese torpedo boats in the vicinity, and on this account the fleet set sail for the Far East 24 hours ahead of schedule. The admiral  issued orders for officers of the watch to open fire in the event of an evident and imminent attack by torpedo boats.

In hindsight, the drama that eventuated seems driven by some combination of inexperienced sailors and commanders, bad intelligence, and paranoia. The Russo-Japanese War had started months earlier with a surprise Japanese torpedo boat attack on the Russian Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur. This apparently terrorized Russian naval command, making torpedo boats a looming, invisible obsession for the entire fleet, even though Tokyo to England seems a very long cruise for small ships.

Admiral Rozhdestvensky

The course followed by the Russian ships toward the southwest took its last two divisions close past the Dogger Bank, the usual fishing ground of the fleet of Hull trawlers consisting of some 30 of small steamboats and over an area of several miles. Toward 1:00 a.m. on 22 October the night was rather dark, a slight, with a low fog partly clouding the air, when the Russian ships stumbled upon the fishing fleet from Hull, England out dragging their nets for cod and haddock. The Russians, somehow under the misapprehension that the English vessels were the feared Japanese torpedo boats, opened fire, with the result that one fishing boat was sunk and others damaged, killing two fishermen and injuring six more. The Russian gunners also managed damage one their own ships, the cruiser Aurora, which is miraculously still surviving today as a museum ship.

Later investigation concluded that Admiral Rozhdestvensky had personally done everything he could, from the beginning to the end of the incident, to prevent trawlers recognized as such from being fired upon by the squadron. It was never determine who gave,  or if , an open fire order was ever given. The attack naturally outraged the British public when word spread. Thee Royal Navy was ordered to clear for action,  and shadowed the Russian fleet through the Bay of Biscay. Although Britain had a defensive military alliance with Japan at the time,  a direct military conflict through timely international diplomacy. 

One of the Damaged Fishing Boats Back at Hull

During the 1899 Hague Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, a treaty had been signed establishing a Permanent Court of Arbitration. Behind the scenes, diplomats of the two countries involved steered the ongoing controversy to this court with the Kingdom of Great Britain as claimant for damages and Russia as the respondent. The British Foreign Office through this court requested a full apology, full reparation, and the punishment of those responsible for the attack as well as assurances of non-repetition from Russia. The arbitrators, five admirals—one each from the participants and three neutrals—spent two months reviewing the case. They concluded  that no Japanese torpedo boats were present and that the firing was entirely unjustified. In  February 1905, Russia accepted the findings and paid Great Britain £65,000 to £66,000 (roughly $300,000) in compensation for the victims and property damage. 

Back at sea, the Russian Fleet was still a long, long way from its Pacific destination.  Three months later, however, the Russian fleet would suffer possibly the most decisive defeat in naval history (only Trafalgar and Midway are comparable)  at Tsushima.

Funeral of the Two Dead Hull Fishermen

The Dogger Bank incident had two short-term and one much more important impact on international relations leading up to the Great War. It demonstrated the viability of international arbitration to  avert a great-power war and led to its use or some form of negotiation to resolve several subsequent pre-1914 international disputes. It also set something of an international precedent for financial compensation for state accountability for harm to neutrals in case of conflict.

Longer term, the semi-amicable resolution of a dispute between Russia and Britain paved the way for the Anglo-Russian Entente of  August 1907 which—combined with the 1904 British-French Entente Cordiale—de facto created the Triple Entente. Successfully managing the military blunder had reminded both sides they had some important common interests and dangerous opponents. Russia's defeat at Tsushima and the subsequent 1905 revolution also made it clear to the tsar and his ministers that they needed more friends on the international stage. France, already allied with Russia, actively worked to bring a new partner to the coalition to counter its greatest threat, the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.   

1914 Russian Poster Celebrating the Triple Entente

Clearly defining the two competing and militarily potent blocs proved to be a critical turning point in the run-up to the July Crisis of 1914 and  the disastrous general war that ensued. Historian David Stevenson argues that inter-alliance diplomacy became markedly "rougher" after Dogger Bank as the European system shifted away from flexible, localized alignments toward  a rigid system with two antagonistic blocs in which civilian leaders gradually became "militarized" by the constant demands of military preparedness. The almost comical Dogger Bank incident helped lock in the system of  competing alliances  which would  eventually (inevitably?) find a crisis which would prove beyond diplomatic solution and would result in a general war by default.

Sources: The Permanent Court of Arbitration;  Oxford Public International Law: Dogger Bank Incident (1904);"Militarization and Diplomacy in Europe before 1914," International Security, Vol. 22, No.1, David Stevenson; Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904–1914,  David Stevenson; Wiki Commons

Hard Aground: The Wreck of the USS Tennessee and the Rise of the US Navy

By Andrew C. A. Jampoler

University Alabama Press, 2023

Reviewed by Jim Gallen, St. Louis, Missouri

When the Tennessee Was New and Beautiful

When I began this read, I was expecting to find an exposition on how the grounding of the USS Tennessee was a turning point in the modernization of the United States Navy. I actually found that the theme of the book is the second clause of the subtitle: “The Rise of the U.S. Navy” of which the grounding of the Tennessee is merely one, though a recurring, story.

Tennessee’s operational career as an armored cruiser spanned just over 11 years, from 1906 to 1917. In 1916, she was renamed the Memphis to free the Tennessee name for a new battleship.  During her career, she transported Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft to Panama for inspections of canal construction. In 1907 she participated in the naval review associated with the  Jamestown Exposition, held from 7 to 11 June 1907, to commemorate the tricentennial of the founding of the first English settlement in America. The outbreak of World War I disrupted commercial sailings and financial transactions, leaving Americans scrambling for transportation home. On 6 August 1914 the Tennessee sailed out of anchorage at Tompkinsville, Staten Island, for Falmouth, England, with only a Navigation Complement, barely enough crew to sail safely but not a “fighting crew.”  Its ammunition holds were loaded with $50,000 in U. S. double eagle gold pieces as part of a shipment of $1.5 million in U. S. government money and $3 million in private money to satisfy expenses and secure transportation for expatriate Americans. She spent about a year in the eastern Mediterranean protecting American interests until her return trip in August 1915, carrying “seven carloads of English gold” to safekeeping in the United States and Canada. By then renamed Memphis, the vessel was participating in American intervention in the Dominican Republic when it was wrecked by a hurricane that left her aground and unsalvageable on 29 August 1916.

That is the story of Tennessee’s service and wreckage, but an even bigger part of the story is the second part of the subtitle, "The Rise of the U.S. Navy,"  beginning in 1881. The Civil War Navy was obsolete and retired. In the words of Navy Secretary, William Hunt: “The condition of the Navy imperatively demands the prompt and earnest attention of Congress.  Unless some action be had…it must soon dwindle into insignificance…We have been unable to make such an appropriate display of our naval power abroad as will cause is to be respected…It is a source of mortification to our officers and fellow countrymen generally, that our vessels of war should stand in such mean contrast alongside those of other and inferior powers.”  

The Navy’s rise began with the 1884 appropriation. Dolphin, Atlanta, Boston and Chicago introduced steel hulls to the fleet. By 1898, the rise was sufficient to decimate the Spanish fleets in Manila and of Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War that put an end to Spanish Empire. Lessons from the Spanish-American war that a heavily-armed cruiser like Tennessee could outrun anything it could not outfight lasted until the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought made them obsolete in 1906. The acquisition of an American island empire gave rise to the Anti-Imperialist League whose leaders, including industrialist Andrew Carnegie, labor leader Samuel Gompers, Harvard Professor William James, and Mark Twain became the conscience of America and questioned its need for a navy. President Theodore Roosevelt made a statement as he sent the Great White Fleet around the world in 1908.

Though still neutral, Great War belligerents reached American shores when Kapitänleutnant Hans Rose of U-53 made a surprise three-hour visit on October 7, 1916 when he docked his boat at Newport, Rhode Island, ostensibly to mail a letter to the German Ambassador in Washington. During courtesy calls on naval district commander Rear Admiral Austin Knight, USN, and commander of Atlantic Fleet’s destroyer force, Rear Admiral Albert Gleave, USA, his boat’s deck guns and torpedoes delivered a show of the Kaiserliche Marine’s force and range to the still neutral United States. Back again in international waters, U-53 reinforced its message by quickly sinking six foreign-flagged steamers.

The advent of U-boats during World War I changed naval warfare, as they threatened to starve Britain into submission. As British subjects subsisted on adulterated bread, ersatz sausage, potatoes, turnips and, occasionally, “boiled crow,” Germany suffered through its own “turnip winter” of 1916–1917. The U.S. Navy responded with a shift to wooden submarine chasers, harbor patrol boats and destroyers. Naval preparation notwithstanding, American mothers “didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.” When war did come, the Navy, in contrast to the Army, was impressively large and relatively prepared to engage. Vice Admiral William S. Sims was dispatched to England as liaison office to the Admiralty in London. Sims’s analysis was that U-boats were “sweeping British commerce from the seas” and that unless success against the U-boats was achieved over the summer of 1917, the grim arithmetic of sinkings versus construction meant that defeat was certain by autumn, possibly by November. Six new Tucker-class destroyers were the first combat Americans “Over There.” USN suffered few combatant ship losses at sea and none in classic big-gun, ship-on-ship duels.

World War I did end, and Nashville became the home of the largest remaining portions of the Tennessee/Memphis. The narrative concludes with the successor Tennessee moored along Ford Island in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, but that is another story.

Order HERE

Though the breath of this work extends over 40 years, about 20 percent of it focuses on the Great War. Roads readers will appreciate Hard Aground for its extensive chronicle of the evolution of the United States Navy from the remnants of the Civil War fleet into the fleet of the Great War and beyond. The intermittent one-to-two- page snippets of artwork featured in Puck magazine or paintings of maritime themes situate naval history in the context of social milieu. Secondary sources are liberally quoted. The index is helpful in locating topics and the bibliography is a guide to further reading. Author Andrew C. A. Jampoler has crafted a tome broader than its title would suggest. Begin this book with broad expectations and let the text narrow them, rather than expecting Tennessee to be the center. If it has a weakness, it is in its meandering breadth in contrast to linear development found in many accounts.  That recognized, it is a worthwhile read.

Jim Gallen

The Vignacourt 14–18 Interpretation Centre

The Thuillier Family: Antoinette, Robert, and Louis

For someone who visited the Western Front regularly from 1989 to 2018,  it's a bit of a shock to discover a new and interesting site that I would love to visit but will probably never get to. Since it just opened in 2018, though, the curators of the Vignacourt 14–18 Interpretation Centre were probably just opening their front doors as I was heading back to the States for the last time. If you're heading over to the Somme sector, I'd recommend a stop at the Centre. It displays thousands of World War I glass-plate photographic portraits taken by local farmers Louis and Antoinette Thuillier between 1914 and 1918. Nearly 4,000 glass-plate negatives were discovered in 2011 in the attic of the Thuillier farmhouse by an Australia TV  network.

Entrance

Interior

A Documentary Made About the Collection

Vignacourt was an important military base located 30 miles behind the front lines during the period of trench warfare. French, British, Anzacs, and Yanks passed through during the war and had their photos taken by the Thuilliers. It became important as a casualty treatment center in 1918 as the German offensive drew near. The Vignacourt Commonwealth Cemetery holds 584 graves. During this period Aussies were dug in near by and their portraits form a major part of the collection.  Present throughout the hostilities were Louis and Antoinette, both farmers who loved new technologies and owned their own camera, which was rare in the early 20th century. Louis taught Antoinette how to use it and they turned their farm yard into a photo studio. In front of an improvised backdrop, both civilians and soldiers would come to the farmhouse to have their photographs taken. When the war ended, the photographic plates were stored in the attic and forgotten about for over a century. 

Gurkha Troops (?)

Aussies

Yanks

Vignacourt municipality purchased the farmhouse in 2012 following a local Anzac Day exhibition and restored it into a museum.  It's now open and, of course, has its own online presence WEBSITE.  Displayed above are some photos I've found of the farmhouse/museum and some of Louis and Antoinette's originals.

How Britain Built an Army of Munitions Workers

 

Females Only Canteen, Phoenix Dynamo Munitions Factory, Bradford

By 1915 it was apparent that Britain was not manufacturing enough ammunition to supply the front lines. Too few shells were being produced, and too many of those that were, failed to explode. In response to this "shell scandal," the Government created a new Ministry of Munitions which increased Government control over weapons production, created 73 new factories and repurposed many others. Hundreds of thousands of new workers rapidly stepped up production. In April 1915, just two million rounds of shells had been sent to France. By the end of the war, that figure stood at 187 million rounds. The Ministry of Munitions by that time had grown into a massive enterprise, employing roughly 3 million workers across over 20,000 factories.

Almost All the Text and Photography the Editor Has Found on the British Munitions Industry During the War Emphasizes the Invaluable Contribution of Its Women Workers, Still the Majority of the Staffing Was Male
(Yes, loaded toward the supervisory level and better paid on the average.)

After the introduction of conscription in March 1916, the government encouraged women to take the place of male employees who were serving at the front. By war's end,  For every 100 servicemen in the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, and British Army, there were 78 men and women working in the munitions factories,  The munitions  industry workforce, stood at 2 million strong. 

Boiler Suits Were Practical;
Long Skirts Risked Getting Caught Up in Equipment

Around 700,000 to nearly 950,000 women worked directly in British munitions factories by the end of the war (with over 1 million women total entering the broader industrial and war workforce). Known as Munitionettes—these women became the poster girls for the war effort and were frequently photographed and filmed to emphasize the importance of their contribution to the war effort.

At the Woolwich Arsenal

Every aspect of munitions work grew in scale and the workers had to be cared for.  For example, female workers at the vast shell filling factory in Chilwell in the suburbs of Nottingham (above) lived in an industrial complex that was like a small city, with its own power station, 125 miles of railway track, 34 railway engines, giant laundries, a ballroom, a cinema, two purpose-built townships, and kitchens producing 14,000 meals and 13,000 loaves of bread a day. Conditions could be brutal, even given this enormous infrastructure. Long shifts were commonplace in the factories and there are reports of women passing out after working 12 hours continuously, without eating. The work was often crushingly monotonous, workers often found themselves doing jobs that had been simplified into a series of unskilled tasks. 

Work in the factories was hazardous. Employees handled explosives and noxious substances known to cause a range of medical disorders, from skin complaints to bone disintegration. Manufacturing mustard and other gases was particularly perilous; sickness rates were so high at HM Factory in Chittening Road in Bristol that workers were entitled to one week of holiday for every 20 days worked. Women handling toxic TNT (trinitrotoluene) turned their skin yellow, earning them the nickname "canary girls."

Results of 1918 Explosion at Chilwell, National Shell Filling Station

Fatalities in the factories were not uncommon, and the filling factories where workers assembled the metal and explosive components of shells, were particularly vulnerable. An estimated 600 people were killed by accidental explosions during the course of the war. The greatest loss of life occurred in July 1918 following an enormous explosion in the mixing house at the National Shell Filling Station at Chilwell in Nottinghamshire. One hundred thirty four people lost their lives and hundreds more were injured. Despite extensive damage, the factory was back up and running within four days. 

Sport, especially football, was encouraged among the new female workforce, and many munitions factories established their own ladies’ football teams. In 1918, knock-out competition the Munitionettes’ Cup attracted 30 teams; matches drew crowds of tens of thousands of spectators and raised large sums of money for the war effort. Despite their popularity, in 1921 the FA banned women’s football matches at their grounds, and this ban was lifted only in 1971.

The Mighty Woolwich Arsenal Employed Over 80,000 Workers During the War, Afterwards, Employment Fell to 6,000

Following the Armistice, Britain’s Ministry of Munitions ordered an immediate, abrupt shutdown of mass arms manufacturing. Vast stockpiles of materials and heavily secured sites, such as the HM Factory Gretna cordite plant (which alone employed 17,000 women), were rapidly decommissioned, sometimes in a single day. [Exact about the numbers and rate of the enormous layoffs have been lost in the "fog of war."] One suggestive statistic is that by 1919, 600,000 females had registered as unemployed. The transition to civilian manufacturing triggered a minor postwar economic surge, but  the rapid influx of millions of discharged soldiers paired with the sudden erasure of defense sector jobs plunged the United Kingdom into a deep economic recession by the early 1920s.

Sources:  World War One at Home,  BBC;  Imperial War Museum; Western Front Association

The Cannock Chase German Military Cemetery in Staffordshire, England

The Cannock Chase German Military Cemetery is the primary resting place in Great Britain for German and Austrian military personnel and civilian internees who died during both World Wars. It was founded following an agreement between the United Kingdom and West Germany signed on 16 October 1959, and officially opened/dedicated on 10 June 1967. It is managed today through a partnership of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German War Graves Commission) and  the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. 

Views of the Graves

Nearly 5,000 graves (around 4,700 to 4,929 total), including 2,143 from World War I (such as WWI Zeppelin crew members) and roughly 2,786 from World War II. Most casualties died while in captivity or internment camps in Britain. In addition, there are crew members from downed fighter planes as well as those whose bodies were washed ashore. 

The cemetery is superbly laid out and landscaped and has several unique features to remember the fallen.

Childrens' Art Work

"Created by young people from Germany and Staffordshire
commemorating 55 years of working together in the
spirit of peace and friendship, 1962-2017"

Zeppelin Crews' Burial Plot

Cannock is the the final resting place of the crew members of the four Zeppelins were shot down on bombing missions over the UK.

"Fallen Warrior" Sculpture

Housed inside the cemetery's Hall of Honor, is a stark, un-idealized bronze sculpture of a corpse draped in shroud by the eminent German sculptor Professor Hans Wimmer (1907–1992). It serves as a transition statement leading visitors to the terraced graves.

In September 2026, Princess Anne (above) opened the cemetery's new “History Center,” which features a bilingual, multimedia exhibition. It also provides space for gatherings and educational activities. Among other things, the exhibition traces the development of aerial warfare in the 20th century. 

Source: Archaeo Death, 25 February 2024; Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The Origins of "No Man's Land" (Redux)

Zonnebeke
Sir William Orpen, 1918

By Editor/Publisher Mike Hanlon

When I came across the information below, I realized I needed to delete my 2013 article on the same topic. Hopefully it's unfindable by the mightiest search engine Silicon Valley can create. 

The late Penn State historian Professor Stanley Weintraub (1929–2019) in his 2001 work Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce claimed to have found the original application of  No Man's Land in his work:  "The first reference I have found to the term is from 1320. In medieval England, Nonemanneslond was a waste beyond London jurisdiction used for executions—usually beheadings. It gradually came to mean a killing field belonging to no side. In wartime it was the territory separating the two sides."

The Etymonline website agrees fully with the professor in their entry:

no-man's-land(n.)

also no man's land, "terrain between front lines of entrenched armies," 1908, popularized in World War I; earlier a tract or district to which no one has an established claim; a region which is the subject of dispute between two parties" (by 1876). Nonemanneslond (early 14c.) was the name given to an unowned waste ground outside the north wall of London, the site of executions. No man (Old English nanne mon) was an old way of saying "nobody.

Etymonline also provides an interesting usage graph (an engram) with their entry that shows zero examples of the usage of the term in the entire 19th century and up to 1907. (More on that below.) Then in 1914, as we might have guessed, a stupendous take off occurs. The frequency of usage grows year by year until 1960 when it leveled off and now in the 21st century is skyrocketing again in popularity. It's still growing for some reason.

By the way, Google's AI Gemini (which I'm starting to discover can be handy) has an explanation for that 1907 blip:

In 1907, the phrase "no-man's-land" experienced a major spike in American popular usage because Oklahoma officially gained statehood, legally dissolving a famous, lawless territory, now the Oklahoma panhandle,  that had been known as "No Man's Land" for decades.  Yep, there's a sign there if you don't trust AI's word.

The Once No Man's Land Where a Major Episode of the
Christmas Truce Took Place

It also adds some helpful bits about its WWI usage:

It was re-adopted into active military correspondence and public reporting on the Western Front by Ernest Swinton in late 1914 (during the "Race to the Sea") to describe the deadly, unclaimed strip of terrain separating opposing British and German trench systems. . . [and, bringing us back to Professor Weintraub's book] gained broad public and journalistic currency around December 1914, particularly after the spontaneous Christmas Truce, when newspapers used it to describe where opposing soldiers met between the lines.

A final note: For most of my lifetime, I've been asking myself,  "Should the word be hyphenated?'  To say the least, style books and websites are ambiguous and confusing on this issue.  So, you will continue to find both versions used on Roads to the Great War. If the style books can't make up their minds, neither can I.

Readers with an interest in word origins might be interested in my article "Why Were They Called Doughboys?"  HERE.

Jane Addams's War Against Preparedness

 

Jane Addams, Front Row Second from Left (April 1915)
En Route to the Hague Conference

After World War I began in 1914, Chicago-based, internationally recognized social reformer Jane Addams  (1860–1935), called for mediation instead of battle, and formed peace groups in Chicago. With the assistance of overseas female activists, Addams convened a women’s conference in Washington, D.C. in January, 1915 to gather international support for opposing the war. Three thousand women attended from numerous countries; others were turned away. They created the Woman’s Peace Party (WPP), made Addams the chair and Chicago its headquarters. 

Three months later, Addams was asked to preside over a spring 1915 meeting of 1,200 peace activists from 12 nations at the International Congress of Women at The Hague. Their goal was to stop World War I and future wars. On 7 May 1915, as most of the delegates were heading back to their home countries,  an event occurred that undermined their pacifistic hopes and ambitions. The sinking the liner RMS Lusitania by a German U-boat outraged the world. In Addams's home county, it set off  a loud call to begin preparing to enter the conflict if necessary.  When this "Preparedness Movement" showed growth and staying power, Jane Addams concluded she needed to mobilize opposition.  

In fall 1915, Addams questioned President Wilson’s recent upgrading of U.S. defenses, and shared her concerns in a letter to him. Shortly afterward, she made more public statement of her views through a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune. In January 1916, she reiterated and expanded her anti-preparedness position in testimony before the United States Congress. Collectively, these helped build a substantial although small following for her anti-preparedness and antiwar efforts.  By the time of the Armistice she had become known as "the most dangerous woman in America".

The Sinking That Launched the Preparedness Movement

Jane Addams Letter to President Woodrow Wilson, 29 October 1915

Feeling sure that you wish to get from all sources the sense of the American people in regard to great national questions, officers (1,422) of the Women’s Peace Party venture to call to your attention certain views which they have reason to believe are widespread, although finding no adequate expression in the press.

We believe in real defense against real dangers, but not in a preposterous “preparedness” against hypothetical dangers. If an exhausted Europe could be an increased menace to our rich, resourceful republic, protected by two oceans, it must be a still greater menace to every other nation.

Whatever increase of war preparedness we may make would compel poorer nations to imitate us. These preparations would create rivalry, suspicion and taxation in every country. At this crisis of the world, to establish a “citizen soldiery” and enormously to increase our fighting equipment would inevitably make all other nations fear instead of trust us.

It has been the proud hope of American citizens who love their kind, a hope nobly expressed in several of your own messages, that to the United States might be granted the unique privilege not only of helping the war-worn world to a lasting peace, but of aiding toward a gradual and proportional lessening of that vast burden of armament which has crushed to poverty the peoples of the old world.

Most important of all, it is obvious that increased war preparations in the United States would tend to disqualify our National Executive from rendering the epochal service which this world crisis offers for the establishment of permanent peace.

Jane Addams the Editor of the Chicago Tribune, 17 November 1915

In an informal discussion following my address at the Social Service club last Monday evening, I was asked to define my opposition on the question of preparedness, and to give some reasons for it.  I gave the following five reasons which I had written out the day before for another purpose, and which I am therefore able to recall quite accurately.

1.  The moment of panic is a bad time to decide any matter, and whatever danger of attack to America, none could be anticipated at the present time when al here hypothetical enemies are exhausting their resources elsewhere.

2.  When the results of this war are studied they will probably greatly modify the type of defense which will be employed in the future—submarines vs. dreadnaughts,[sic] etc. At the moment, the expenditure of enormous sums of money upon dreadnaughts of the old fashioned type is, to say the least, a premature decision.

3. It is hoped by many people in Europe and America that one result of this way may be the proportionate reduction of armaments.  At this moment, to have America so markedly increasing her "defense" would make it impossible for her to enter such a plane with clean hands.  By taking action now she assumes that any such plan is impracticable.

4.  There is no doubt that if the United States yields to pan at this moment and largely increases her army and navy, other nations will feel that they must also do this.  The action of the United States will have a profound influence upon the governments of South America and those in Asia, increasing tremendously the expenditure of the people's taxes for military purposes.

5.  The fact the United States is preparing against even a hypothetical enemy will make it much more difficult for her to act as a mediator in ending the war.

I beg to differ with your statement that the policy of preparedness is a matter of "military technique."  On the contrary, it seems to me to be a matter of affecting the general policy of a nation, whose very foundations rest upon the convictions of its citizens and free discussion.

It is certainly the prerogative of a citizen to urge the postponement of the entire matter until international affairs have returned to a normal condition

 

Some additional points Jane Addams raised with Congress in January 1916

A. Unlike European nations, the United States faced no definitive, predictable enemy and possessed ample geographic warning of any imminent homeland threat. 

B.  Quoting a member of the French Chamber of Deputies, Addams warned Congress that adopting a preparedness program meant the U.S. risked becoming "infected with the militaristic spirit,"

C.  She warned that expanding the U.S. military would empower a domestic "military and naval caste," undermining American civil democracy

Nobel Prize Medal, 1931

The Overall Impact of  Jane Addams Opposition to the Preparedness Movement

Opposition to the Preparedness Movement was largely ineffective at halting American war preparations, though it temporarily slowed down early legislative efforts and shaped initial political compromises. President Woodrow Wilson was initially opposed and was openly hostile to the military preparedness movement, advocating instead for strict neutrality and an unarmed or limited "armed neutrality".

The president, though,  in response to events such as escalating German submarine warfare, the political fallout from the Pancho Villa raid in 1916, and mounting political pressure ahead of his 1916 reelection campaign ,eventually reversed his stance and backed major pro-preparedness legislative bills. Congress passed Wilson's  National Defense Act of 1916, which significantly expanded the size of the U.S. Army and National Guard, and the Naval Act of 1916, which launched a massive fleet-expansion program.

Jane Addams was vilified during this period, and more so after America's entry into the War in April 1918, as she expanded her antiwar activities, staunchly refusing to support the nation's war effort even after its official entry into the conflict in April 1917.  Her popular reputation gained some redemption, however, in 1931 when she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the level of the war's sacrifices were being reconsidered.

Sources:  Articles from NPR and Priscilla Roberts in the Encyclopedia of World War I, 2007, Letter from the  Swarthmore College Peace Collection, News account from  Digital Jane Addams

Eyewitness: Major Whittlesey of the Lost Battalion Receives a Message from the Boche

Left: From a Reenactment at the Actual Site:
Soldiers in Rifle Pits and Whittlesey with Senior Officers;
Right:  Site Marker on Hillside

On the evening of 2 October 1918, Major Charles Whittlesey led roughly 550 soldiers of the 77th Division into the Charlevaux Ravine in the Argonne Forest of France, pushing past enemy lines as ordered. While his battalion reached its objective, French and American units on their left and right flanks were pushed back by heavy German counterattacks. By the following morning, Whittlesey realized his men were completely surrounded and trapped. He issued this order to his men: "OUR MISSION IS TO HOLD THIS POSITION AT ALL COSTS. NO FALLING BACK. HAVE THIS UNDERSTOOD BY EVERY MAN IN YOUR COMMAND." 

Four days later the opposing German commander sent a message to Major Whittlesey.  This is an eyewitness account of what ensued from Sergeant Major Walter Baldwin.

Sergeant Major Baldwin

Monday, 7 October 1918

It was a monotonous day, with the added dead and wounded, a repetition that we had grown used to.  Then night again, a cold damp night it was, that dug into the very marrow of our bones, causing new aches and pains until we wondered if death itself was not more merciful. Then came another morning with the  same humdrum things, the morning of the seventh in this wilderness of murder. In the afternoon several men, unable to withstand the strain any longer, took it  upon themselves to go after a bag of rations they had  seen fall from an aeroplane. They had only gone but a  short distance when all but one ran into a machine gun nest and were completely wiped out. 

[There was, however, one survivor of this group, Pvt. Lowell Hollingshead, who later described his capture:

I have no idea how long that deadly "rat-tat-tat" of the machine guns kept up, it may have been for only a few minutes or longer but it seemed like eternity to me. I had no idea how many of the other fellows were alive, but I did know that the boy directly in front of me was dead. . .About that time a German appeared from behind a bush not six feet from me and held a long Luger leveled at my head. The German half smiled, half sneered and I instinctively raised my hands and said the only German work I knew, "Kamerad." Perhaps a second passed between the time I said "Kamerad" until he slowly lowered his gun, but it seemed several lifetimes to me.]

The survivor was made prisoner, well fed and his wounds dressed, then the German commander had him blindfolded and with a cane containing a little white flag for his guidance, they led him through their lines to their outposts from which they sent him off in the direction of our position on the hill.

He finally reported to Major Whittlesey and handed him the following communication from the German officer:

To The Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion, I. R. 308, of the 77th American Division

Sir: The bearer of the present, LOWELL R. HOLLINGSHEAD, has been taken prisoner by us on October 7. He refused to the German Intelligence Officer every answer to his questions and is quite an honourable fellow, doing honour to his Fatherland in the strictest sense of the word. 

He has been charged against his will, believing in doing wrong to his country, in carrying forward this present letter to the Officer in charge of the 2nd Battalion, J.R. 308 of the 77th Division with the purpose to recommend this Commander to surrender with his forces as it would be quite useless to resist any more, in view of the present conditions.

The suffering of your wounded men can be heard over here in the German lines and we are appealing to your human sentiments.

A white Flag shown by one of your men will tell us that you agree with these conditions.

Please treat the LOWELL R. HOLLINGSHEAD as an honourable man. He is quite a soldier. We envy you. 

The German Commanding Officer

Private Hollingshead

Major Whittlesey read the note carefully and silently, then without comment, he placed it in the hands of  Captain McMurtry, who likewise read it without change of expression, passing it in turn to Captain Holderman. The three then looked at each other and simultaneously a broad grin actually spread over the features of all. Undoubtedly the appeal to us to stop contained a grim humor that the hard headed Boche could not realize, in his hasty desire to play a safe game under the present harrowing conditions.

It's very audacity smacked of simplicity, when one considers the brand of warfare they had waged. After six days of relentless diabolic Teutonism, using every conceivable means of hell's torture and trickery, sending death and destruction in our midst, he would now have us cry quits, when he became tired of the unequal carnage.

The Major, fearing the slightest sign from us might be misinterpreted as a show of acceptance and surrender, yelled "Baldwin, take in the Panel," and I promptly scrambled out of my funk hole scurrying over the torn and bumpy ground, dragging from its place the signal we had prayed so hard and long would be seen by the planes. Now this ray of hope must be put in the same category as the rest of the forlorn ones.

Turning to the unfortunate Hollingshead, the Major berated him unmercifully, in a loud angry voice, for having left his post without permission, ordering him to report at once to his company commander. The incident had spread like wildfire through the ranks.  Men, almost too weak to stand, actually on the verge of starvation, had now mustered every ounce of remaining strength to voice their sentiments in cursing and damning the Hun, daring him in loud exclamations of choice profanity to come over and try to take us. That was all the white the Germans would ever see on that hillside slaughterhouse and was the unanimous sentiment of every half-dead man who still retained a breath of life.

I was within five feet of Major Whittlesey when he received the note from Hollingshead, and I positively declare he never used the expression "GO TO HELL," in response to the German commander. That story is simply a myth. There was absolutely no recognition given to the Boche communication, therefore there was no necessity to answer it. . .

[Later that night]  literally alive with vermin, weary and sore in body and mind, we settled down for another night in hell's garden. About nine o'clock, one of the men on the right flank came stumbling up to Major Whittlesey's funk hole and breathlessly gasped, "The 307th Infantry has broken through and their outposts are now in contact with our right flank."  

The Lost Battalion had been saved. On 8 October, the 190 remaining men of the “Lost Battalion” walked back to American lines. Another 260 wounded were carried out. 107 men were dead and 63 missing. Sgt. Major Baldwin survived until 1965, Pvt. Hollingshead to 1966. Charles Whittlesey—heavily burdened by the loss of his men and uncomfortable with his unwanted public fame as a war hero died by suicide in November 1921.

Post-Battle Survivors of the Lost Battalion

Source:  Over the Top, April & May, 2013

John Buchan's Incredibly Productive War

A writer, soldier, politician, and public servant, John Buchan was born on 26 August 1875 in Perth, Scotland. His father was a lively character who enjoyed singing border ballads and other Scots songs. His more reserved mother epitomized Free Church virtues. These contrasting attitudes to life made Buchan acutely aware of the importance of maintaining respectability, while appreciating that it's the world's eccentrics who get things done. At Oxford, he proved a brilliant student, while concurrently launching a lifetime literary career during which he would publish over 100 books. After graduating from Brasenose College in 1899,  he launched a highly successful practices in both law and journalism, notably serving as a political private secretary to Lord Milner, the High Commissioner for South Africa, during and after the Boer War.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Buchan was suffering from duodenal ulcers and considered medically unfit for active service. He spent three months confined to bed and began to write a serialized history of the conflict, which was published by Thomas Nelson in 24 volumes. With each installment around 50,000 words long, the work was marketed as "a readable narrative" and "an authoritative record for the future." 

Writing at the beginning of the First World War, Buchan found a side project that proved a welcome distraction from the realities of world events. Later he remembered, "While pinned to my bed during the first months of war and compelled to keep my mind off too tragic realities, I gave myself to stories of adventure."  His The Thirty-Nine Steps was serialized in Blackwood's Magazine in the summer of 1915, where it was credited to the pseudonym H. de V. The book version came out in October the same year under the author's own name and sold over 25,000 copies in its first three months. With a plot full of train travel, code-breaking, car crashes and political intrigue, the novel has remained in print ever since. It is considered the seminal work of the "spy thriller" genre.

The novel's action takes place very precisely during a few weeks in May and June 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War. And its hero, Scotsman Richard Hannay, is immediately caught up in a troublesome situation that exposes just how vulnerable Britain could be to foreign plots. Throughout the book, Buchan holds Hannay up as an example of an ordinary man who puts his country's interests before his own safety. This patriotic stance, along with the page-turning plot, made the story a hit with soldiers stuck in the trenches of the First World War.

Order HERE

During 1915 he twice visited the Western Front as a war correspondent, observing and reporting on the Second Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Loos. Somehow, during this period, he found time to write his second espionage novel, Greenmantle. Set during the war in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Loos, Buchan's hero Richard Hannay is drawn into a dangerous intelligence mission to investigate rumors of a German-orchestrated Muslim uprising during World War I. Traveling through enemy territory with trusted companions, Hannay must decode cryptic clues, assume false identities, and navigate a web of spies and conspirators. Their perilous journey leads to Constantinople and beyond, where they race to uncover the mystery of "Greenmantle." Lesser remembered today than The Thirty-Nine Steps, figures like Graham Greene and Alfred Hitchcock, who made an outstanding film of The Thirty-Nine Steps, considered Greenmantle the superior work. 

In 1916, Buchan received a field commission as a second lieutenant in the British Army's Intelligence Corps and was attached to General Headquarters (GHQ) on the Western Front, drafting official press communiqués and speeches for General Sir Douglas Haig. It wasn't long, however, before he was pulled out of uniform and appointed Director of Information, with direct responsibility to the prime minister for Britain's propaganda effort. After the war, John Buchan became a Member of Parliament and a peer and, in 1935, was sworn in as Governor General of Canada. His service was highly admired before his 1940 death in Montreal. His literary output continued at a high level throughout the remainder of his life.

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While his combination of military and public service during the Great War was remarkable in itself,  his parallel literary output borders on the superhuman. 

• 24 volumes of: Nelson’s History of the War

• 3 novels: The Thirty Nine Steps, Greenmantle, and Mr. Steadfast

• ?: Eyewitness reports from the Western Front; communiques; anonymous articles (a long-time practice)

Buchan nearly matched this pace for the remaining 22 years of his life, but that's another story.

Sources:  National Library of Scotland; History Today;  Oxford University Research Archive