The Times Great Letters: A century of notable correspondence

Sweating of women workers.

Insufficient feeding of children.

Employment of boys on work that to all intents ruins their chances in after-life — as mean a thing as can well be done.

Foul housing of those who have as much right as you and I to the first decencies of life.

Consignment of paupers (that is of those without money or friends) to lunatic asylums on the certificate of one doctor, the certificate of two doctors being essential in the case of a person who has money or friends.

Export of horses worn-out in work for Englishmen — save the mark! Export that for a few pieces of blood-money delivers up old and faithful servants to wretchedness.

Mutilation of horses by docking, so that they suffer, offend the eye, and are defenceless against the attacks of flies that would drive men, so treated, crazy.

Caging of wild things, especially wild song-birds, by those who themselves think liberty the breath of life, the jewel above price.

Slaughter for food of millions of creatures every year by obsolete methods that none but the interested defend.

Importation of the plumes of ruthlessly slain wild birds, mothers with young in the nest, to decorate our gentlewomen.

Such as these — shameful barbarities done to helpless creatures we suffer amongst us year after year. They are admitted to be anathema; in favour of their abolition there would be found at any moment a round majority of unfettered Parliamentary and general opinion. One and all they are removable, and many of them by small expenditure of Parliamentary time, public money, and expert care. Almost any one of them is productive of more suffering to innocent and helpless creatures, human or not, and probably of more secret harm to our spiritual life, more damage to human nature, than for example, the admission or rejection of Tariff Reform, the Disestablishment or preservation of the Welsh Church. I would almost say than the granting or non-granting of Home Rule — questions that sop up ad infinitum the energies, the interest, the time of those we elect and pay to manage our business. And I say it is rotten that, for mere want of Parliamentary interest and time, we cannot have manifest and stinking sores such as these treated and banished once for all from the nation’s body. I say it is rotten that due time and machinery cannot be found to deal with these and other barbarities to man and beast, concerning which, in the main, no real controversy exists. Rotten that their removal should be left to the mercy of the ballot, to private members’ Bills, liable to be obstructed; or to the hampered and inadequate efforts of societies unsupported by legislation.

Rome, I know, is not built in a day. Parliament works hard, it has worked harder during these last years than ever perhaps before — all honour to it for that. It is an august Assembly of which I wish to speak with all respect. But it works without sense of proportion, or sense of humour. Over and over again it turns things already talked into their graves; over and over again listens to the same partisan bickerings, to arguments which everybody knows by heart, to rolling periods which advance nothing but those who utter them. And all the time the fires of live misery that could, most of them, so easily be put out, are raging and the reek thereof is going up.

It is I, of course, who will be mocked at for lack of the senses of proportion and humour in daring to compare the Home Rule Bill with the caging of wild song birds. But if the tale of hours spent on the former since the last new thing was said on both sides be set against the tale of hours not yet spent on the latter, the mocker will yet be mocked.

I am not one of those who believe we can do without party, but I do see and I do say that party measures absorb far too much of the time that our common humanity demands for the redress of crying shames. And if, Sir, laymen see this with grief and anger, how much more poignant must be the feeling of members of Parliament themselves, to whom alone remedy has been entrusted!

Yours truly,

JOHN GALSWORTHY

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Treating Married Women Fairly

6 April 1914

Sir, I think it may serve a useful purpose to enunciate clearly three inevitable results of compelling professional women to give up their professions on marriage. (1) It prevents admirable women of a certain type of character from marrying at all; (2) it deprives the community of the work and the experience of another type of woman, who does not feel able to sacrifice her private life to her career; (3) it leads other women, of a more perfect balance, who demand the right to be both normal women as well as intelligences, to (a) wilfully and “dishonestly” concealing the fact of their marriage from their employers; or (b) living in union with a man without the legal tie of marriage.

Regarding the last alternative, I may say that it is sure steadily to increase if interference with married women’s work is persisted in. My own experience of three years of marriage, in which I have discovered the innumerable coercions, restrictions, legal injustices, and encroachments on her liberty imposed on a married woman by the community or sections of it, has brought me to the point of being ready to condone in any of my educated women friends a life lived (if in serious and binding union) with a man to whom she is not legally married. Three years ago such a course would have filled me with horror.

Only by treating married women properly, i.e., by leaving them the freedom of choice allowed to all other individuals, can innumerable unexpected evils be avoided.

Yours faithfully,

MARIE C. STOPES

Dr Stopes was at the time seeking to have her marriage annulled. Married Love, the work which made her name, in part by openly advocating that women practise birth control, was published in 1918.

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NOT A MANLY GAME

6 June 1914

Sir, The sooner it is realized that golf is merely a pleasant recreation and inducement to indolent people to take exercise the better. Golf has none of the essentials of a great game. It destroys rather than builds up character, and tends to selfishness and ill-temper. It calls for none of the essential qualities of a great game, such as pluck, endurance, physical fitness and agility, unselfishness and esprit de corps, or quickness of eye and judgment. Games which develop these qualities are of assistance for the more serious pursuits of life.

Golf is of the greatest value to thousands, and brings health and relief from the cares of business to many, but to contend that a game is great which is readily mastered by every youth who goes into a professional’s shop as assistant (generally a scratch player within a year!) and by the majority of caddies is childish. No one is more grateful to golf for many a pleasant day’s exercise than the writer, or more fully recognizes the difficulties and charm of the game, but there is charm and there are difficulties in (for instance) lawn tennis and croquet. It certainly seems to the writer that no game which does not demand a certain amount of pluck and physical courage from its exponents can be called great, or can be really beneficial to boys or men.

The present tendency is undoubtedly towards the more effeminate and less exacting pastimes, but the day that sees the youth of England given up to lawn tennis and golf in preference to the old manly games (cricket, football, polo, &c.) will be of sad omen for the future of the race.

I am, yours, &c.,

B. J. T. BOSANQUET

Bosanquet was himself a cricketer, for Middlesex and England, and noted as the inventor of the googlie – of which more later (see page (#litres_trial_promo)).

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The German people and the war

7 August 1914

Sir, May I add my testimony to that of Lady Phillips published in your issue of to-day? I started from Germany at 3 o’clock p.m. on Saturday last, with my wife and sister-in-law, and during the whole of our trying and anxious journey we experienced nothing but the utmost kindness and courtesy from both people and officials.

Perhaps I may add one thing more. It is too late to believe in the bona fides of the German Government; but in that of the German people I still believe. During my short visit I had conversations with many Germans of various classes. All believed that Russia had provoked the war in order to establish the Slav hegemony over the Germans, and that France was an accomplice in the spirit of revanche. All hated the idea of war — the look in their faces haunts me yet — but accepted it with a high courage because they believed it to be necessary for the safety of their country.

The German people, believe me, are better than their Government. We have to fight them, but let us do so in the spirit of gentlemen, giving them full credit for the admirable and amiable qualities to which those who know them best bear loudest witness.

W. ALISON PHILLIPS

Phillips was formerly a foreign correspondent with The Times. War between Britain and Germany had been declared three days earlier.

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old soldier

5 September 1914

Sir, I have, before the war was declared, offered my services as an old soldier in many regiments and as one who has been in service in South Africa (victory and disaster), to the authorities, but no acknowledgment has ever been received.

I have got over 100 men to recruit willingly in Fife.

I have had my three servants refused as “unfit” to-day — one for chest measurement, a well set up young man of 22; another very naturally, for varicose veins; a third because at some time he injured his knee and does not work well. The latter is a chauffeur, and long ago offered his services for transport service, and is a good driver. All these men are under 25 years of age. If the medical authority are not allowed to enlist such men for various services how can they render service to their country?

In my own position I consider it scandalous that I cannot fill a position in a cavalry regiment instead of a boy of 17 who has seen no service.

Yours faithfully,