Chapter 1: The recruitment drive to get volunteers.
Recruitment posters:
Recruitment posters where put up LL OVER Britain in the first world war as a way of getting men to join the army, they where encouraged by a sectary of war named Lord Kitchener, one of the most popular posters being of him pointing at the viewer with the caption “Britons, join your country’s army , god save the king”. It was coloured with nothing but red, white and black on an orange background. Some propaganda posters had very deep meanings and made the people think about how joining the army may benefit them in the future while others had no hidden meaning and simply stated what they where put up to say being ‘join the British army today and help protect those who need you’. The propaganda posters where very successful at first but after a while men stopped signing up for the front line thus the government introduced black and white propaganda;
~Black propaganda was designed to make the Germans look bad and to create a stronger hatred towards them amongst the British civilians and to hopefully encourage men to sign up for the army again and to get people that weren’t allowed to join the army such as women to encourage their husbands, brothers, sons etc. to sign up for them.
~White propaganda was mostly innocent, the posters that where categorised as white propaganda didn’t say or present anything that would make the Germans look bad- they simply said something along the lines of ‘sign up for the British army, your comrades need your help’ or anything else that didn’t imply that either country was evil, although this wasn’t as effective as Black propaganda it still worked and helped to recruit men for the front line and trenches.
Palls battalions:
Palls battalions where also introduced by Lord Kitchener as a way of getting men to sign up to the British army. Palls battalions where made up of a group of men that where all acquainted with one another and where perhaps too scared to go to war alone so they where given the ability to sign up in groups of friends with the promise that they would be kept together in the trenches, They where mainly developed from men that where in the same sports teams such as football, rugby, cricket and tennis while others where just groups of friends, neighbours and possibly even work colleagues. Although this seemed like a good idea at the time few men from each group survived leaving one or two members to return to their family’s in a mental state that couldn’t be helped by therapy, more than often the whole of the battalions where wiped out leaving no identification as to who they where or were they had come from. Those who did survive the palls battalions would be recruited again for world war two even if they hadn’t recovered from their earlier traumas.
After reports of many men returning home in a physically and mentally unstable state from watching as their friends died around them palls battalions where banned and weren’t introduced again until late in world war two where the exact same problems occurred and once again they where banned, only this time the ban was permanent.
White feather campaign:
The white feather campaign was formed by women who wanted to help recruit men for the British army, they would carry around a basket of white feathers and give one to every man they saw walking around the streets of Britain that looked fit to join the army but wasn’t wearing an army uniform as a way of shaming them into signing up. This worked very well for a majority of the first world war but once word broke out about what was really taking place on the front lines the women themselves where shamed by their actions and soon stopped handing out feathers with the realisation that they had latterly been sending thousands of young men to their deaths. In a sense this could be taken as a form of bullying since practically everyone at the time knew what the white feather represented and to have it place on your clothing where everyone could see it must have been humiliating witch is why not every woman in Britain agreed with this method and decided to stay well clear of it.
The promise that it would be ‘over by Christmas’:
The government made a false promise to the civilians of Britain by giving their word that the war would be over in time for Christmas and that the men that where currently on the front lines would be allowed to return to their family’s and the children that where evacuated would be brought back so that they could all spend Christmas normally. Even though this was a promise it didn’t hold, by the time Christmas had come around the troops where still out on the front lines fighting for their country and the evacuees where still scattered around the countryside with their foster families, this came as a shock to many people as they thought that they could trust the governments every word thus they spent Christmas and new year with an incomplete family.