A Journalist's Diplomatic Mission: Ray Stannard Baker's World War I Diary

10. London in War Time

58 10 London in War Time. Lloyd George Prepares to Conscript the Irish. APRIL 9 A great day. Parliament sits and Lloyd George introduces his new manpower bill with the dangerous provision for the application of conscription laws to Ireland. While he was speaking at Westminster, a new offensive of the Germans was beginning on the French front. Conditions are recognized as being most serious. If they were not so, Lloyd George would never have dared bring in so drastic a measure. The Irish will certainly make trouble. A few people think the Germans will be able to take Amiens, and perhaps break through. A heavy chill wind, with a gasping yellow fog. APRIL 10 I lunched today with Ambassador Page in the Embassy lunch room. Admiral Sims was there. Much talk of the new offensive north of Arras, which is apparently breaking through the British lines. There is a pessimistic feeling growing here, and the difficulty is accentuated by the row in Parliament over the new manpower bill. Many people think that Lloyd George has put forward an utterly reckless proposal. Although the danger in France is overwhelming , and the anxiety great, the bill is meeting a far wider and more determined opposition than any recent government measure. It is being attacked in the mild Asquithian manner by Mr. Asquith, vigorously by such papers as the Daily News, which is always in opposition, reasonably and with far greater influence by the Manchester Guardian, which gains force now because of its recent tendency to support Lloyd George in all real crises, and finally by London in War Time | 59 the Chronicle, the editor of which until now has been regarded rather as one of Lloyd George’s “pet pressmen.” Of course, the whole Irish nationalist and radical group is in wild revolt, threatening actual rebellion. I had a long talk with Mr. Page about the whole English situation. He is as pronounced a “bitter ender” as any Englishman—says all Germans are liars and the only path to peace is overwhelming military victory. He spoke of imaginations as one of the chief necessities of statesmanship and said that Lloyd George, in his judgment, has a better equipment of it than any other British leader. It is the best thing I have yet heard said of him. The news from France is bad, yet the life of London rolls on. All the streets are crowded, the stores full of purchases, restaurants busy, taxicabs a-plenty, and an enormous amount of love-making and marriage and dying. (I saw yesterday two large wedding parties.) The courts are in session, the schools keeping , and reformers spouting on the Green. New books are being published and sold—and professors are lecturing upon such subjects as these: (I take the notices from the Times.) “The Ceylon Expedition of 1803” at the Royal Historical Society, “The Present Day Application of Experimental Psychology,” “Timber—Its Identification and Mechanical Properties.” This very morning, when hundreds of dying British soldiers were being brought into London, collectors were trading as usual at “Messrs. Puttick and Simpson’s,” where “a Chinese Famille Noir vase, finely enamelled with prunus trees, K’ang-tsi period,” was sold for 2,000 guineas! Verily the everyday habits of life are stronger even than a thundering great war not a hundred miles away. APRIL 11 More disquieting news from the front. The Germans have taken Armenti ères78 and are driving ahead. The roll of the big guns can be heard in England . Thousands of wounded are coming into London. A grave situation. This evening I went to a reception given by Mrs. Hamilton for Bertrand Russell79 at her apartment down near the Thames Embankment, which in the dark and deserted streets I had the deuce of a time finding. It was a crowd of “intellectuals,” nearly all pacifists. I was curious to meet Bertrand Russell 78. Armentières is a village in northern France on the Belgian border. 79. Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) was a British philosopher, mathematician, social critic, and prolific writer who would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. His anti-war activism during World War I earned him a six-month prison sentence in 1918. 60 | Reporting on Public Opinion in Great Britain, France, and Italy for we have heard so much of him in America not only as a philosopher and mathematician, but as...