All language subtitles for BBC.The.Great.War.08of26.Why.Dont.You.Come.And.Help.divx.mp3

It was the month of May.

The spring of 1915 was running out.

The spring offensives became summer
battles. There was no end in sight.

Nothing like this war
had ever been seen.

It defied prophesy,
defeated understanding
and had escaped man's control.

For nine months now, every
human endeavour had gone awry.

For nine months, all man's reason,
all his ingenuity, all his science

had produced destruction
beyond imagining
and sacrificed millions of lives.

1,000 years of civilisation
seemed to be visibly crumbling.

The insatiable guns
incessantly demanded new victims.

At sea, underwater weapons struck
at the roots of a sailor's courage.

On land, the use of gas, poisoning
the very air that men breathed,

seemed to reduce to nothing
bravery, enterprise and skill.

Not only soldiers, awaiting the
dire chances of each day in squalid
trenches, felt the war's impact -

it reached into every village
and street, with its demands
for guns, for shells, for men.

It uprooted tradition. It brought
pain, hardship, opportunity -

above all, change.

Now Britain's years
of tranquil security were over.

The awakening of her people
was brutal.

It took the form
of a munitions scandal.

News broke
of the army's shortage of shells.

The Times quoted Sir John French,
commander of the British forces:

"The want of an unlimited supply
of high explosive

"was a fatal bar to our success."

The mass-market Daily Mail
deepened the sense of shock

by attributing the famine to
the nation's idol, Lord Kitchener.

This was sacrilege, yet
the British were becoming uneasy.

For months, their best manhood had
poured into the recruiting offices.

It was Kitchener's own summons
they answered -

the towering hero of legend,
K of K, Kitchener of Khartoum.

Surely, he could not have sent the
army into battle without shells?

The shell scandal was only part
of a deeper unease about the war.

Lloyd George,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote:

"There was a sense of revolt
against the attitude
of the Government

"and what was regarded
as its leisurely
and take-for-granted attitude

"in dealing with
vitally serious matters -

"matters of life and death
to the whole of the allies,
to the British Empire

"and to hundreds of thousands
of gallant young men,

"who had offered their lives
to their country."

On May 26th,
Britain's leadership changed.

CHEERING

Asquith remained, but his
government was now a coalition of
Liberals, Conservatives and Labour.

And there was another innovation.

"The Prime Minister has decided
a new department shall be created

"to be called the Ministry of
Munitions, charged with organising
the supply of munitions of war."

"Mr Lloyd George has undertaken
the formulation and direction
of this department."

For the moment, the mood of 1914
resurfaced amid the facts of 1915.

Italy declared war on Austria and
crowds packed the streets of London

to cheer Italians going home to
join up. Cheering was not enough.

Five days into his new appointment,
Lloyd George was rousing the nation
to face reality.

"We are fighting against the best-
organised community in the world -

"the best organised,
whether for war or for peace,

"and we have been employing
too much the haphazard,
go-as-you-please methods,

"which would not have not enabled
us to maintain our place as a
nation, even in peace, much longer.

"The nation now needs
all the machinery
that is capable of being used

"for turning out
munitions or equipment,

"all the skill
that is available for that purpose,

"all the industry, all the labour

"and all the strengths,
power and resource of everyone
to the utmost."

War had outgrown battlefields.

It had become the test
of a nation's technology.

"The making of a shell case
involves the metal trades,

"blast furnaces, steelworks,

"iron and steel foundries, forges,

"stamps, locks and dyes,

"rolling mills, rod and wire works

"and behind them, the colliery
and the iron-ore quarry.

"It requires factories

"and these in turn require
machinery-covered electrical plant,

"factory equipment
and machine tools,

"engines, pumps, turbines,
road and rail transport,

"boiler-making and constructional
engineering work.

"The explosives for filling and
propelling the shell from the gun

"involve the output of chemical
works, dye works, gas works

"and a great deal of very careful
laboratory experiment,
investigation and testing."

Germany lacked none of those.

Her industry, like her army,
was organised on the grand scale.

Her growth had been based on
science and a ruthless exploitation
of new ideas.

Before 1914, her chemistry supplied
Britain with dyes for dresses
and aspirins for headaches.

Now Britain needed
her own chemical industry.

There was an explosives famine.

Without them, a shell was, as Lloyd
George said, "a harmless vase".

Equally,
it was harmless without a fuse.

There were more than 50 parts
in a shell fuse,

parts that had to work
as accurately as clockwork.

It was the big
German clock and toy industries

that made the fuses
for the Jack Johnsons

which crashed
on the British trenches.

But in Britain, industries capable
of mass-producing fuses were few

and her equipment was out of date.

While Kitchener recruited
the new armies,

Lloyd George created new industry.

On May 27th, he walked into his
office at the Ministry of Munitions

to attack his colossal task.

"There was a table -
I forget whether
there were one or two chairs -

"but by the orders of the Board
of Works, there was no carpet.

"I believe I had a greater struggle
over getting a carpet

"than I had over getting
£50 million for munitions.

"I said to my assistant,
'Look at that table.

"'Look at those two chairs.'

"'Yes?' he said.
'What is the matter with 'em?'

"I said, 'Those are
the Ministry of Munitions'."

In France, the problems at home
were even worse.

A sixth of her industry
lay in German hands.

Mobilisation had drained France
of fit men.

More than a million of them
had already been killed,
wounded or posted missing.

Behind the army zone,
France was now a country of women,
old men and children.

Women delivered the post and papers.

They drove the massive machines
that watered the Paris streets.

They swept its ancient gutters
free of refuse.

Frenchmen who idolised womanhood
had to get used to seeing women

in unnatural and unromantic jobs.

The women farmed the rich soil
with the same love as their menfolk.

But they didn't have
the strength and skill.

Land produced less food

and prices began to go up.

Only the first are served.

Fruit and vegetables are still
in good supply, but dearer
than last year.

Prices are much higher
than last year.

Cabbages cost 60 centimes each.

Other grocery prices
are increasing by leaps and bounds.

Corbie market's increase is 300%.

The burden of shortages
and rising prices fell heavily
on France's poor families.

Many were trying to live
on a soldier's pay, or even worse,
on a widow's pension.

But the nation was still welded
together by the patriotic flame
of the Union Sacre.

The French solved the problem
of munitions with the same courage

that created victory on the Maune.

This nation of individualists
submitted to government control.

By 1915, industry sent the army
most of the munitions it needed.

Women were the key to success
in the factories.

They adapted to this delicate work
which they seemed to be suited to.

Many have accepted dangerous jobs,
like the handling of fuse detonators.

Today, shells have been almost
entirely finished off by women.

All working hard, many with
serene looks on their faces.

Some, on the other hand, look grim.

They are probably thinking
they are helping to avenge
some dear victim of the war.

A few hundred miles away, German
women worked with equal devotion.

The Germanic empires were
a beleaguered fortress.

The British blockade cut them off
from US wheatlands

and Argentine beef.

Behind the German and Austrian
troops on enemy soil,

life was becoming grimmer.

Since January,
bread had been rationed.

It now included potato flour.

People who had come from Berlin
said no signs could be seen
of a war there.

They must be blind.

Bread cards are not the only
visible sign of war.

Did you ever see a private soldier
accepting a few orderlies
in Unter Den Linden in peacetime?

It's full of them now, not very
warlike in their clothing, carriage
and appearance. Many are wounded.

All of them feel and act
as the chief person of the drama -

as well they might.

Vienna remains a city of pleasure,

but in its dark suburbs,
misery is on the increase.

The mothers wring their hands
beside the beds of their children,

because their young lives are
threatened by enteritis caused
by eating the horrible war bread.

The bread ticket did not favour
fair shares - it was not meant to.

I had no difficulty anywhere in
getting all the wheat bread I wanted.

My class did not have to eat
war bread.

The British knew nothing
of the horrors of occupation,

of casualties in hundreds
of thousands.

But their cost of living
was rising fast.

Bread was tuppence three farthings.

It's now fourpence ha'penny per loaf!

The price of meat for baking doubled
in price, that of the cheapest cuts
for boiling trebled.

I hardly know how to make ends meet.
I have five children with another
due in June.

We eat less, and have pawned things
to make up the difference between
prices before the war and now.

That can't go on.

In Britain, too, the burden of war
fell most heavily on the poor,

including the families of soldiers.

Times was very hard.

I only had 12 and six a week,
so I couldn't go out and spend
like anyone else.

I used to sit at night

and try to do a bit of reading
or sewing,

to pass the time away.

It was very hard,
and my mind would wander.

I'd wonder what he was doing,
if he was thinking about me.

I'd wonder how he was going on
and when I would see him again.

Things like that.

A private's pay was small,
and so were the allowances
for a wife and children.

Any official delay in payment
meant a trip to the pawnshop.

Death or mutilation in the country's
service could mean utter poverty
for the hero's family.

A warrant issued by Kitchener said:

A pension or gratuity for
the dependents of a deceased soldier
shall not be granted as a right.

It shall not be granted,
or continued,

when the applicant is unworthy,
in the army council's opinion,

or unless the soldier's services
were, in their view, such as
to justify the award.

To the British upper classes,

the war was something to read about
in the papers or on a poster.

The town is vibrant with the call
to arms.

Posters appeal for recruits
on every hoarding,

on shop windows, on omnibuses,
tramcars and commercial vans.

First, it was strange to see officers
in uniform on omnibuses and trams,

but the novelty of it
has long since worn off.

The cartoons of Bruce Bairnsfather,

serving in France,
appeared in The Bystander.

They created a new national image -
Old Bill,

a long-suffering soldier whose
sour humour rose above every danger.

Oh, star of Eve,

whose tender beam falls
on my spirit's troubled dream.

Give it a good hard 'un, Bert.
They fizzle a bit first
if they're gonna explode.

Well, if you know of a better hole,
go to it.

Hey, what was that, Bill?
Trench mortar. Ours or theirs?

To think that it's the same
dear moon that's looking down on him.

This moon will be the death of us!

Well, Alfred, how are the cakes?

As Old Bill bestowed his advice
on young Bert, the newcomer,

the worse the danger,
the funnier the joke became.

Soldiers laughed at the cartoons.
Others found them reassuring.

The reality was a long way away.

They didn't know what it was like.

When I talked about it, my father
would argue points of fact
he couldn't have known,

because he wasn't there.

That was the approach of the public
at large - they didn't know.

They hadn't any conception -
how could they?

They knew people came back on leave
covered with mud and lice, but they
didn't know what danger we were in.

They felt the war
was one continual cavalry charge,

that one spent all day chasing
Germans or them chasing us.

Had they realised the strain
of sitting waiting for something
to drop on one's head,

they wouldn't have seen it as war -
just play.

The idea was that England
couldn't lose.

Officers on leave noted how little
the middle class had been touched
by war.

In spite of the number
of men in uniform in the streets,

the indifference to and ignorance
about the war was remarkable.

The universal catchphrase was,
"Business as usual."

Against the
background of "business as usual"

Lloyd George toured the
country to see conditions himself

and drive on the Industrial
Revolution providing shells
and guns for the troops.

He used all his personal magic -
all his ruthlessness.

In 1915, I drove Mr Lloyd George

when he was Minister of Munitions

on his munitions tour of Wales.

Going from town to town.

When we arrived
at Newport in Monmouthshire

just as he got out of the car
someone in the crowd shouted out,

"Why don't you send out some guns?"

Instantly he replied,

"Why don't you come and help?"

While Lloyd George
was touring the country,

inspecting, persuading, energising,

the British mood was changing.

They were grimmer - resolved to
defeat Germany no matter the cost.

The violence of war
had begun to touch them too.

On May 7th, Britain was stunned by
news that the great liner Lusitania

had been torpedoed and sunk
with the loss of over 1,000 lives.

SEAGULLS CRY

Survivors arrived at Liverpool with
stories of the ship's last moments.

There was a dull, thud-like,
not very loud explosion.

As I ran up the stairs,
the boat was already heeling over.

Just after I reached the deck,
a stream of steerage passengers
came rushing up from below.

They fought their way
into the nearest boat.

They were white and terrified. They
were shrieking. There was no order.

The strongest got there first.
The weak were pushed aside.

No children
could have lived in that throng.

A mass grave was dug for the
victims in the Irish town of Cork.

Indignation at this act of German
frightfulness crossed the country.

There was another side to the story.

The ship was carrying a consignment
of rifles and shrapnel shells.

Her Captain ignored Admiralty
instructions on avoiding dangers.

The German government had advertised

in New York papers that passengers
travelled at their own risk.

Nevertheless, anti-German riots
exploded in big industrial towns.

Any shop with a German-sounding name
was good for looting and smashing.

GLASS SHATTERS

CROWD SHOUT

Groups began to form.

Somebody rushed round and said

Keppel's butchers shop had been
broken into by a crowd of women

and all the eatables stolen.

I happened to be
walking down this street

and from nowhere came a great
rush of women in clogs and shawls.

They stood outside the drapers shop,

shouting and shaking their fists.

An old woman
stepped forward out of the crowd

and threw a tin can at the window.

It bounced off harmlessly.

That might
have been a signal of command.

The others threw their shawls back,
produced bricks they'd hidden,

and a fusillade of these
missiles crashed into the window.

Not even women were spared.

A frightened German woman came out
into the street eager to get away.
Her nervousness attracted attention.

Harpies jeered at her.

Tweaked at her hat.
Grabbed at her purse.

Air raids sharpened the hatred of
the home fronts towards the enemy.

For the first time in history,

bombing from the air threatened
cities far from the battlefield.

Women and children were killed.
French, German and now British.

The zeppelins first came to
England on the 19th January 1915.

On 31st May they bombed London,

capital of the Empire,
for the first time.

Behind their indiscriminate progress

the raiders left
homes wrecked and lives shattered.

The word non-combatant
had lost its meaning.

The rage against Germans mounted,

even those who
were naturalized British subjects.

A hate campaign was worked up
by John Bull - a magazine with the
largest circulation in the country.

"By this time
we begin to know our Hun.

"The Hun is always the same.

"Yes. Always the true son of Cain.

"The man of blood.

"Though his skin is white,
his heart is black.

"Every employee of the state,
in government or the services

"of German birth or parentage
should be forced to resign.

"The innocent
must suffer with the guilty."

In every country at war, hatred
seems natural, even reasonable.

The enemy was portrayed as
an ogre of horrifying monstrosity.

Or as a discomfited clown.

Dark neuroses lurked beneath
the surface of civilian patriotism.

Yet the patriotism was real enough.

It inflamed
the hearts of women as well as men.

It could be unpleasantly hysterical.

There were women who tried to
force men into the services by
every device of scorn and blackmail.

I went to the music hall
in civilian clothes on my leave.

Whilst lined up outside,

a lady came along.

She was about 35.

She put a white feather into my hand.

I looked at it, felt very disgusted.

There wasn't much
I could do about it.

As well as being given white feathers
there was another method of approach.

You'd see a girl coming towards you

with a smile on her face and you'd
think, "It's someone who knows me."

When she was about five or six paces
from you she would suddenly freeze

and walk past you with
a look of utter contempt and scorn.

If she could have spat,
she would have done.

It was more hurtful than a feather.

It made you curl up and you
couldn't reply as she'd gone on.

Thousands of other women

found an outlet in
Lloyd George's munitions programme.

They came from domestic service,

mills and shops, mostly.

A lot of very young girls were there

and young married women

who had come principally
to help keep their homes together

when their husbands were away.

Also many of them felt that
they were helping the war effort.

More and more women
took over from men

as this Industrial Revolution
gathered speed.

By the end of 1915 there were
73 national munitions factories,

as well as the armaments firms and
all the privately-owned industries

converted to war work.

American machines and
British improvisation

were the tools
for Lloyd George to achieve success.

The skilled craftsman
was replaced by the machine minder.

Victorian methods
gave way to mass production.

In the closing months of 1915,

the national factories combined
output was 200,000 shells -
nearly all of a lighter nature.

In the following year
their total output

was nearly seven million,

more than half of which
was medium and heavy shell.

Not only in munitions
did women take the jobs

that had traditionally been for men.

They repaired gas holes.

They shovelled coal
into the retorts that made the gas.

Heavy work. Hot and dirty.

# She's a lassie from Lancashire

# Just a lassie from Lancashire

# She's a lassie I love so dear... #

The first women conductors
appeared on buses and trams.

Middle class girls left their
sheltered life in the home

and worked as clerks in offices
or became nurses.

For women,
the war marked a social revolution.

# When the clouds roll by,
I'll come to you

# Then the skies will seem more blue

# Down in Lovers Lane, my dearie

# Wedding bells...#

It was terribly hard, terribly
monotonous, but we had a purpose.

We meant to do that work and we did.

There wasn't a drone in the factory.

Every girl worked
and worked and worked.

I didn't hear one grumble.

And I hardly ever heard,
or know of one that stayed out

because she had her man in mind,
and we all had.

I myself was working
with sailors' wives

from three ships that sank,
and it was pitiful to see them.

If anyone had a letter from France,
we just read it.

We got to know all
the girls' sweethearts or husbands.

We got to know
all their Christian names.

We'd say, "How's Tommy?", "How's
Dick?", "Have you heard from him?"

Some would shed a tear, which meant,
you know, what had happened to them.

Wages were good and some
of the public resented this.

They thought the girls
were forgetting their place.

We, as munition workers, were
heartily disliked by the public.

People would look at you and say,
"Huh! One of those munition workers."

Anything derogatory that could be
said about you was said about you.

It was very uncomfortable sometimes.

And, um, I think, as a rule,

the idea was that you made such
enormous amounts of money,

and other people didn't.

The most dangerous work
was filling shells with explosive,
or making the explosive itself.

The clothing we wore was fireproof,
the shoes were fireproof,

and every time we went out
to a meal we had to take all our
fireproof clothing off

and put on outdoor clothing, which
took time from our dinner hour.

We were searched when we returned
in case of cigarettes and matches,

or pins, etc.

Once or twice we heard
that so-and-so had gone.

Perhaps she'd made a mistake
and her eye was out.

But there wasn't any big explosion
all the time I was there.

We sang, we made the little pellets.
Very innocent looking,

but had there been the slightest
grit in those pellets, goodbye.

We got home
and we had a lovely, good wash.

And, believe me,
the water was blood red,
and our skin was perfectly yellow,

right down through the body,
legs and toes and toenails even,

perfectly yellow.

These women were called canaries.

Their devotion was essential
to the success of Lloyd George's
armaments programme.

They were also the cause of one
of the toughest problems in 1915.

The men, the trade unions,
saw them as a threat.

A threat to privileges built up
painfully over decades

and jealously guarded.

Unskilled women working machines
were a threat to traditional
craft skills and methods.

They were a threat
to the future livelihood of men.

Employers could make
huge profits out of the war.

The unions fought hard against
the introduction of unskilled
workers. Dilution, it was called.

Resolved: that we refuse to
entertain the proposal to allow the
introduction of semi-skilled workers

on work done by qualified mechanics.

Resolved: that no woman
shall be put to work a lathe,

and if this is done the men will
know how to protect their rights.

Each month of 1915
the number of strikes rose

from 47 in February to 63 in May.

The disputes over dilution took
place again a history of 100 years
of bitter industrial struggle.

For the first time, the trade unions
no longer represented the underdog.

Now, there was full employment.

The workers were essential
to the national effort.

For the first time,
cabinet ministers negotiated
as equals with trade unionists.

It was yet another revolution.

It took a firm promise
that pre-war methods
would be restored at the peace.

Together with an
act of Parliament controlling
the whole field of arms production,

before the trade unions
accepted dilution.

To Lloyd George,
drink was another enemy,

insidiously undermining
his campaign for higher production.

Beer could be bought all day.

Was this not a peril to efficiency?

Was it not a cause of absenteeism?

A new war regulation limited
pub opening hours.

And so life was changed
in yet another way by the need
for shells and guns.

A slow business, a hard task
to uproot the habits of a nation
steeped in tradition,

over-affectionate
towards old customs.

Yet the King, symbol of one of
Britain's most revered traditions,

helped the change forward.

He toured the industrial areas
without fuss or pomp,

to persuade the workers that they
were performing national service.

"Without shells, we cannot
hope to win," he told them.

As an example, he signed
the pledge, and alcohol vanished
from the Royal household.

He visited the wounded
and the homes of their families.

The King spared no effort
to bind the people and monarchy
together by shared experience.

But the impatient war
was clamorous with needs.

Soldiers paid with their lives when
design or manufacture faltered.

The money was raised by five
shillings a week for everybody.

Then they introduced a bonus system.

You filled so many shells, and
after that amount had been filled,

you got a bonus
for how many more you filled.

This was a very bad thing really,
because it led to carelessness.

People were not careful,

the shells would come back to us
as either too heavy or too light.

And that was, of course,
a very bad thing because they might
fall short when they were fired.

Our high explosive for 18 pounders
is so unreliable that we cannot
use it in large quantities.

We have lost 36 guns in a month
by premature explosions.

This represents the highest
percentage of bursts suffered
by any side in this war.

Even by the end of the year most of
the shells were the result of orders
placed under the war office system,

which Lloyd George had so attacked.

A third of them came from US
and Canadian factories.

Not until 1916 could Lloyd George's
programme produce war material
in overflowing abundance.

Nevertheless, the British were
rousing themselves.

Civilians and soldiers, industrial
as well as military might,

the Allies were moving
into total war.