Writers at War: Propaganda and Fiction in the Great War

PETER BUITENHUIS Writers at War: Propaganda and Fiction in the Great War On the afternoon of 2 September 1914 the yellow sun poured through the windows onto the great blue conference table of Wellington House in Buckingham Gate, London. Around the table sat William Archer, Sir James M. Barrie, Arnold Bennett, A.C. Benson, R.H. Benson, Robert Bridges, Hall Caine, G.K. Chesterton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Hope Hawkins, Maurice Hewlett, W.J. Locke, E.V. Lucas, J.W. Mackail, John Masefield, A.E.W. Mason, Gilbert Murray, Sir Henry Newbolt, Sir Gilbert Parker, Sir Owen Seaman , George Trevelyan, H.G. Wells, Israel ZangwilC and assorted government officials. Rudyard Kipling and Sir Arthur Quiller Couch had been invited but were unable to come. 1 Even without them this was probably the most important gathering of creative and academic writers ever assembled for an official purpose in the history of English letters. It was a secret meeting, called by C.F.G. Masterman, recently a cabinet minister in the Asquith Liberal government, who was now the chief of the National Insurance Commission and recently appointed director of British propaganda. Wellington House, the home of the Insurance Commission, was the cloak for the work of the agency until it became the Department of Information and moved into larger quarters two years later. Masterman, before entering the government, had been the literary editor of the Daily Chronicle and had a wide acquaintance in the literary world. One of his first acts, then, had been to enlist the aid ofliterary men to write propaganda.2 This was the purpose of the meeting on 2 September . Unfortunately, no minutes have survived that meeting, if any were kept. All we have are glimpses from writers' letters or journals; Thomas Hardy recalled in a letter written much later to Anthony Hope 'that memorable afternoon in September, 1914, the yellow sun shining in upon our confused deliberations in a melancholy manner that I shall never forget. '3 And ArQ.old Bennett laconically noted in his diary: 'Masterman in the chair. Zangwill talked a great deal too much. The sense was talked by Wells and Chesterton. Rather disappointed in Gilbert Murray, but I like the look of little R.H. Benson. Masterman directed pretty well, and Claud Schuster and the Foreign Office representative were not bad. *Research for this article was made possible by a fellowship from the American Council ofLearned Societies, for which I should like to express my appreciation. UTQ, Volume XLV, Number 4, Summer 1976 278 PETER BUITENHUIS Thomas Hardy was all right. Barrie introduced himself to me. Scotch accent; sardonic canniness.'4 Whatever was said, the writers all pledged themselves to assist the war effort in any way they could, and the recruiting parade was over. It was a remarkable success. William Archer, Anthony Hope, Sir Gilbert Parker, and Gilbert Murray joined a staff at Wellington House at the outset; Arnold Toynbee, Lewis Namier, John Masefield, John Buchan, Ian Hay, and Hugh Walpole later on. Arnold Bennett and H.G. Wells joined in 1918. Buchan succeeded Masterman for a while; he was succeeded by Lord Beaverbrook, and, near the very end of the war, Beaverbrook was succeeded by Arnold Bennett, who became deputy minister of information after Beaverbrook resigned for reasons of health. Most of the others I have mentioned, with the notable exception of Thomas Hardy,* wrote propaganda pieces at the direct request of the government. Seldom in history have writers rallied so enthusiastically to a patriotic cause. How were they used? Unfortunately, most of the records of Wellington House and the successive Department and Ministry of Information were scattered and destroyed at war's end. But from those that survived, and some turned up at the Public Record Office in London as late as 1972, we can piece together at least some of the methods. Most of the surviving records are in the form of the transcripts of secret Parliamentary hearings into the conduct of propaganda, which was a political football from first to last. To conceal the official origin of British pamphlet and book propaganda , Wellington House paid five guineas for the use of a commercial...