These posters shouting for recruits somehow did not look like England;
they were too hysterical; they were not effective: London, with more
posters per head of population than any other city in the Empire,
recruited men less swiftly than any other place.
Thousands of sight-seers crowded to the football matches while the
newspapers vainly lashed themselves into fury. It was only when Lloyd
George asked for more men, and gave convincing reasons that they were
needed, that the country responded. Day by day the newspapers made the
best of bad news from the front, and day by day did the readers
thereof conclude that England was doing well, and they "supposed that
she would bungle through." No man of prophetic foresight had yet
risen to say "This is a life and death struggle for us; we need every
man in the country, and every shilling to win the war." The common
talk was that we had stepped in to keep our treaty with France and to
assist poor Belgium, whose neutrality had been violated. Englishmen
did not feel that England's fall was first and last the object of
Germany's ambition. They did not realize that Germany saw in England
the nation which was always thwarting her and frustrating her desire
for "a place in the sun."
Should the theatres be kept open? should German waiters be still
allowed in the hotels? should German music be played at Queen's Hall?
should horse racing be continued?--these were the questions whose
discussion occupied a considerable amount of space in the newspapers.
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