The Rush to Arms in 1914

One of the most commonplace assumptions about the outbreak of the First World War is that the people of Britain greeted it with a feverishly patriotic enthusiasm that drove males of military age to ‘rush to the colours’ and volunteer in the British Army. The story goes that there was no need for conscription because men were like lemmings engaged in a collective rendezvous with death, beating down the doors of recruitment offices to fight in the ‘war to end all wars’.

This presentation examines the chronology and experience of recruitment in the opening months of the war to reveal a more complex, nuanced, and human response to war. Making use of unpublished letters and diaries and private recollections, Prof Catriona Pennell goes beyond sterile recruitment statistics to explore individual and community experiences that drove men to join up and thus challenge the mythology of ‘war enthusiasm’ that has built up over the past 110 years.