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It's the 75th anniversary of Stanley Baldwin's famous 'the bomber will always get through' speech. It's an important text which is widely quoted, both in my primary and my secondary sources, as a testament to the fear of bombing in the 1930s. But I've never actually read it very closely, and I think I'm in good company because it's usually the same couple of lines which are quoted, and the rest of it is ignored. And as it doesn't seem to be online anywhere I thought it would be a useful exercise to transcribe it and put it up on the web.

Baldwin was not Prime Minister when he gave the speech, as is sometimes said. He had been PM twice before, in 1923-4 and 1925-9 (and would be again in 1935-7), but at this time he was Lord President of the Council, a Cabinet-level post with no major duties attached to it. Baldwin's real importance was as leader of the Conservative Party, which had by far the most seats in Ramsay MacDonald's National Government. He had power without responsibility, one is tempted to say.

The occasion for the speech was a debate in the House of Commons about disarmament, held on 10 November 1932 -- the eve of Armistice Day. The original motion was proposed by Clement Attlee, deputy leader of the Labour Party, and read:

That, in the opinion of this House, it is an essential preliminary to the success of the forthcoming World Economic Conference that the British Government should give clear and unequivocal support to an immediate, universal, and substantial reduction of armaments on the basis of equality of status for all nations, and should maintain the principles of the Covenant of the League of Nations by supporting the findings of the Lytton Commission on the Sino-Japanese dispute.1

This was obviously an attempt to embarrass the Prime Minister, a well-known pacifist -- and a hated former leader of the Labour Party. But MacDonald didn't speak in the following debate; instead, his Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, defended the Government's record and went into some hopeful diplomatic initiatives in some detail. George Lansbury, Labour's leader, lashed out and accused all nations of failing to fulfill any of the international peace pacts signed since the war. Baldwin spoke last of all. According to the Times's parliamentary correspondent, when he finished 'There was a deep and almost emotional round of applause' from the House.2 Of course, he was the party leader for most of the MPs, but it does seem that he had touched a chord. Baldwin had a longstanding record of concern about the air threat and his sincerity would have been evident. And -- not that there was ever any doubt given the huge majority enjoyed by the National Government -- Attlee's motion was defeated by 402 votes to 44.

The following transcript of his speech is taken not from Hansard but from The Times.3 I've edited it lightly, mainly to move the murmurs of approval from the listening MPs into footnotes. The phrases in bold are those which are most commonly quoted.
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  1. The Times, 11 November 1932, p. 7. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 14. [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 8. [↩]

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Gary Smailes has put together Military History Carnival 8, and it's a good one. The item which, inevitably, appealed to me most was Damned Interesting's account of incidents where the world nearly stumbled into an accidental nuclear holocaust. (But wait, there were more!) Obviously, a scenario where the survival of a significant proportion of humanity, and of civilisation itself, depends upon accidents not happening is not a particularly good thing. But we got WarGames out of it, so on balance I think we're ahead.

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Newark

After six weeks in the UK, I finally got to see somewhere other than London when I attended a conference at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire. To get to Cranwell, I took a GNER train from King's Cross to Newark in Nottinghamshire, where a RAF courtesy bus took me the rest of the 20km or so to the air force base. Between when the train arrived and when the bus left, I had about 90 minutes to kill, and so I used that time for a quick whirl around the town to see what there was to see. Mainly that was two things: the magnificent ruins of a castle, and quite a large church.
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Every day during the Blitz, the Daily Mail published a selection of letters from readers on various topics, out of the hundreds received every day. Clearly it can't be assumed that these are representative of British public opinion generally, or of Mail readers, or even of those readers motivated to write letters to the editor (though on that last point, at least there is the newspaper's own daily summary of its mailbag to compare with). Still, they're fascinating to read. Consider this letter from Molly Roche, of Welwyn, Hertfordshire:

For God's sake put women in charge of the R.A.F. policy before it is too late.1

This is somewhat cryptic as it stands: what did she think women would do differently, if they were in charge of the RAF? It's clear enough from the context that the policy she had in mind was the bombing of German cities in reprisal for the Blitz. At this point, 80% of the letters received by the Mail advocated 'unlimited reprisals on German cities' -- though another 12.5% were opposed.2 Was she right in implying that women generally favoured reprisals? It's impossible to say, because of the caveats mentioned above, but there were certainly other women who were thinking along the same lines. For example, Ida Turnbull, Bury St. Edmunds:

English men and women are getting as tired of hearing "bombed at random" as we were of "appeasement." And what good did that do? The only thing that Hitler and Co. can understand is the iron fist: so why not bomb their principal streets and shops of Berlin? We have the finest airmen and craft, so why not let them "Go to It?"3

Mrs. A. Penington, Blackpool:

"Bomb Berlin. Raze it to the ground." is on everybody's lips.4

Mrs. Rosa Keoghoe, Wood Green, N.22:

Why all this tender feeling for German children? When bombing military objectives it is their own families' fault if they are within bombing distance. They have the same chance to break up their homes and go to safer places as many English families have had to take. This is war, and we are all in it.5

Mrs. E. M. McMillan, Ormskirk, Lancashire (it's not clear what she is proposing specifically, but it's the first letter in a section headed 'Reprisals'):

As a cancer or a poisonous weed should be ruthlessly cut out, so must the German race be utterly and definitely purged of all its evil powers.6

Not all published letters from women on the matter of reprisals were in favour, of course. And there were plenty in favour from men -- or so I assume, since in most cases first names or honorifics are not given, only initials; where either or both appear, it's nearly always for a woman. The letter I found most chilling in fact gives no clue as to the gender of the author, and is from E. James, Colchester:

I understood we were going to be meeting force with force. What is murdering women and children but force?7

At least it's not hypocritical.

  1. Daily Mail, 26 September 1940, p. 3. [↩]
  2. Ibid. The other 7.5% were presumably on unrelated topics. [↩]
  3. Ibid., 23 September 1940, p. 3. [↩]
  4. Ibid., 24 September 1940, p. 3. [↩]
  5. Ibid., 2 October 1940, p. 3. [↩]
  6. Ibid., 4 October 1940, p. 3. [↩]
  7. Ibid., 30 September 1940, p. 3. [↩]

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This week I attended the bi-annual departmental Work in Progress Day, where postgrads give talks on their research. I wasn't presenting this time around (I did earlier this year) but it turns out that two of my fellow students are also fellow bloggers! (Which, as far as I know, makes a total of three for the department, including myself.)

One I knew about already, actually: David Llewellyn's Australia Felix. He's doing his PhD on the influence of utilitarianism in Australian political life -- for example in the genesis of the Australian constitution. His paper, which is online, takes in Aeneas, Madame de Stael, Gallipoli, Chartism and of course Jeremy Bentham. By taking as a touchstone a novel by Henry Handel Richardson, it also gave me flashbacks to English lit in high school, where I was forced to read The Getting of Wisdom. Which in retrospect wasn't a bad book, but at the time I had a very low tolerance for any novel without spaceships or elves in it, so a coming-of-age novel set in a private girls' school didn't exactly cut it! Do check out David's website and blog though.

The other blog is Megan Sheehy's History and Web 2.0. Her MA topic is on the use of Web 2.0 tools by Australian historians, and her paper was specifically about the use of YouTube. Megan also has a post about her talk, but even better (and rather recursively!) she has put a two-part video of it on YouTube (part one, part two).

Above is the first part: you can see me arriving late at -8:37, but it's worth watching the rest of it too :)

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brave new world.. TOMORROW MORNING

While trawling through newspapers I keep an eye out for interesting aircraft-related advertisements. These are not uncommon, most obviously in relation to industries which could claim some relationship with aviation (after any record-breaking flight, there was usually at least one ad pointing out how much the triumphant pilot owed to some petroleum product or other). Other companies had to try a bit harder to make some aerial connection (Lyon's swiss rolls, for example). But this magnificent example goes way beyond most! Actually, aviation is only one element of its vision of the future, designed to sell Field-day, a shaving lotion made from olive oil.

Here's the text which appears below the image:

What of the future? What shall we wear? Eat? Drink? Shall we live in glass houses? Travel in Gyroplanes and wear Television on our wrists? Who knows? But we do know how we shall shave -- for "Field-day" is one of the 'Things to Come' that's here already! Revolutionary! Incomparably better! Different -- not only from lather but from other 'brushless' creams. Fast -- for the age of speed. Blades last longer. Simple and safe, too! Safe because you can see through "Field-day" as you shave instead of blindly guessing! Made with pure Olive Oil .. free from Caustic Alkali (an essential part of lather!) Made for the Future. On sale NOW. Are you going to wait -- or be one of the 'Moderns'? For the sake of your skin and your razor-blades do step out of that rut.1

So how is the future invoked here in the pursuit of higher sales figures for Field-day? Most obviously, the city of the future has giant skyscrapers, with aeroplanes (and giant tubes of shaving lotion, ridden by a man who is clearly accustomed to boldly taking charge of his destiny in his dressing-gown) flying in between them. In fact, one of the skyscrapers is also an airport: there's an aeroplane just taking off from it, and at the top of the tower is a windsock. Aside from the odd heliport or two, downtown airports have failed to materialise, but they remained a possibility in the 1930s.2 The text mentions such wondrous technological possibilities as glass houses, autogiros, and wrist televisions.3

Then there is the rhetorical, almost ritual, use of the names of those two great novels about the future to come out of Britain in the 1930s, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and H. G. Wells's The Shape of Things to Come (1933) (or rather, the 1936 film-of-the-book, Things to Come). Neither of these can be said to look forwards to the future without any misgivings, however; the one is a dystopia (albeit one masquerading as a utopia), and the other might as well be, at least for the hundreds of millions of people killed along the road to a technologically-sophisticated, tunic-wearing paradise. So they might seem an odd choice for a straightforwardly optimistic (if not entirely straightfaced, perhaps) depiction of the future. But that's par for the course: the titles of both books very quickly became a shorthand for the unknown future, often with little relation to anything in Huxley or Wells.4

Finally, there are all the key words defining the attributes which are to be associated with the future, and with Field-day: it will be revolutionary, incomparably better, different, faster, longer lasting, simple and safe. What man could resist a shaving lotion so laden with futurity? It is indeed the shave of the future, NOW. I do so want to be one of the Moderns, and I'd buy it myself, for sure -- except that judging by Google, it looks like neither Field-day nor J. C. and J. Field, Ltd., its manufacturer, actually made it into this future. O brave new world, that doesn't have such things in it!

  1. Daily Mail, 8 May 1937, p. 14. [↩]
  2. For example, in 1935 the Corporation of London was reported to be considering buying up land for a city airport along the south bank of the Thames, possibly near (or between?) London Bridge and Tower Bridge. Another possibility was to actually build a landing platform over the Thames itself. Daily Mail, 2 February 1935, p. 5. Even more extraordinary was the proposal made in 1931 by Charles Glover, an architect, for an elevated airport above the railway siding yards at King's Cross and St Pancras stations. This would have taken the form of a wheel half a mile across, with the spokes acting as runways. There is a drawing and a bit more detail in Felix Barker and Ralph Hyde, London As It Might Have Been (London: John Murray, 1995 [1982]), 212. [↩]
  3. So we're still not in "the future" yet, although an increasing number of people effectively have a television in their pockets or hand bags, combined with telephone, still camera, movie camera, gramophone ... [↩]
  4. Yes, "brave new world" is itself lifted from Shakespeare, where it's used differently; but The Times could only find occasion to quote the phrase twice in the almost-century-and-a-half before the publication of Huxley's novel, and then used it at least 11 times in the rest of the 1930s (not including direct references to the book or to The Tempest). [↩]

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Cabinet War Rooms

One week I'm looking out over London's skyline from the top of St Paul's, the next I'm exploring underneath its streets, at the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. But this post is only about the latter, as no photography is allowed in the Museum. That's OK: while the museum was most interesting and very well done (and seemingly a magnet for American tourists), the Cabinet War Rooms -- the underground bunker complex from where, in large part, the British war effort was directed during the Second World War -- were why I was there. Everything was closed down and mothballed after V-J day, and at least some areas remained as they were during the war, until it was opened up again in the early 1980s; others have been restored more heavily (or turned into cafes!)

Above is the entrance, in King Charles Street, just off Horse Guards Road (and just a block away from Downing Street). It's next to HM Treasury, though during the war the building seems to have been the Office of Works. On the one hand, the sandbagged entrance with machine gun slit is nicely evocative of a wartime sentry pillbox. On the other, it's all fake: the real wartime entrance to the bunker was through adjacent government buildings. Plus several of the "sandbags" have been torn by some malcontent and it's looking a bit tatty!

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Alan Kramer. Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. The barbarisation of warfare from the Balkan wars onward, including the targeting of civilians. This looks the goods (and a worthy successor to the book he co-authored with John Horne, German Atrocities, 1914), though oddly there's only a little on bombing. Not that I'm complaining, mind ...

Peter Stansky. The First Day of the Blitz: September 7, 1940. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. From the blurb, 'Much of the future of Britain was determined in the first twelve hours of bombing' -- the Blitz spirit was just the start of a social revolution. Hmmm, that's a big claim, but not necessarily an incorrect one: it'll be interesting to see if he can pull it off.

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Model plane

Here's something a bit different. It's a paper model aeroplane which I made from a design published on 30 June 1934 in "Boys and Girls", the weekly children's supplement to the Daily Mail. The claim is made there that it glides, but sadly all mine does is stall and then enter a tailspin ... but perhaps somebody taking greater care in making the model will have greater success! A PDF of the plan can be downloaded from here (size 1.4 Mb) and then printed out onto an A4-sized sheet of paper, if anyone wants to try it. The only other materials needed are a thin, stiff piece of card (for backing), glue, a match (for the wheel axle), a pin (for the propeller), tissue paper or something similar (to weight the nose, in the event that the model is actually airworthy). And scissors. The instructions are in the PDF; here are some tips based on my own experience:

  • It does make it a lot easier if you fold where appropriate before you assemble the model!
  • Take especial care to score along the lines on the rear fuselage section, as otherwise it will be out of shape and the tail assembly won't sit straight.
  • There's no need to make the left and right tabs on the forward underside of the fuselage overlap precisely, as the "fuselage closing strip" is then going to be too wide for the fuselage at the front and will spoil the aeroplane's clean lines.

I think the original was in colour, but the microfilm I printed it from was not, so unfortunately it's a little drab. The colours could be worked out from the roundel and added with a paint program -- or even just coloured in on the paper -- but that would require more energy than I was prepared to expend :)

"Boys and Girls" would often include an aviation-related cartoon or story -- in fact, one of the regular strips followed the adventures of Phil and Fifi, the "flying twins" -- but this edition was chock-full of airminded goodness. The Whisker Pets see an aeroplane and decide to make their own (hilarity ensues); a stork-powered air show entertains the inhabitants of Treasure Island ('I like being an airwoman', says Penelope the parrot); two panels list "Famous flyers' great flights" (including some not so famous now, such as the non-stop flight of Codos and Rossi from New York to Syria in 1933); and on the Pet & Hobby Page, Teddy Tail provides some hints on how to make airworthy model aircraft -- which I clearly should have read before making mine! This was obviously intended to coincide with the annual RAF Pageant held at Hendon on the very same day, a hugely popular air show: 200,000 attended that year, a record crowd -- despite the best efforts of pacifist demonstrators outside the front gates.

This being the Daily Mail, there was probably another agenda besides getting plane-crazy youngsters to remind their parents to buy their favourite right-wing newspaper that Saturday: to make even more plane-crazy youngsters. The need to create an airminded youth was a common theme in the Rothermere press in the 1930s. For example, just two days earlier, Amy (Johnson) Mollison's regular aviation column had been entitled "Don’t discourage the young idea in flying",1 in reference to an Air Ministry ban on solo flying under the age of 17, after a 16-year old boy had been killed doing just that near Scarborough. And, near the end of the year, Lord Rothermere himself contributed an article called "Make the youth of England air-minded! Has Germany 10,000 aeroplanes?"2 -- the question explaining and justifying the demand.

The RAF roundels on the model aeroplane mark it out as a machine of war, not a pleasure craft or commercial aeroplane. So while I had fun making and trying to fly it, I was also replaying (in a very small way) the mobilisation of youth for the next air war. I wonder how many of the adolescent boys and girls who made it before me joined the RAF or the ATA when the prospect of war became reality, just five years later?

  1. Daily Mail, 28 June 1934, p. 4. [↩]
  2. Daily Mail, 4 December 1934, p. 15. [↩]

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Or, at least, not very likely. In June 1922, the Daily Mail printed a two-column article under the headline "Our lost air power" (a title it used for just about all of its air-scare stuff that year).1 The author's name is not given, but is described as 'An Armament Expert', who until recently was on the 'Allied Commission to Germany'. The bulk of the article concerns two types of aerial bombs he inspected while overseeing German compliance with the disarmament clauses of the Versailles treaty.

The first was the elektron bomb. Though this sounds like it might be an exotic weapon based on the latest advances in atomic physics, it's actually just an incendiary, for setting cities ablaze. But this was something special. In contrast to the crude, and fairly ineffective, incendiaries used by the Germans against London during the war, the elektron burned so hotly that it could burn through armour plate, and what's more, once ignited it could not be extinguished. As it weighed less than pound and was only nine inches long, thousands could be carried per bomber (or airliner). The German High Command thought it had a war-winning weapon, since

A fleet of aeroplanes would carry sufficient to set all London alight, past any hope of saving.

But -- fortunately for London -- the war ended before sufficient numbers of elektron bombs were available to the German forces.

The other weapon revealed by An Armament Expert was a small globe, made of glass and only four inches across. Inside the globe was a dark brown liquid: an unspecified form of poison gas (mustard, I'd guess). When the globe is dropped from an aeroplane and hits the ground, the glass shatters and generates 'thousands of cubic feet of poisonous gas'. If used against London, the gas would permeate into cellars and tunnels, and lie in the streets for weeks.

One raid using such bombs would paralyse the very heart of our Empire, and bring a horrible death to most of London's citizens.

How horrible? Imagine:

That girl with the baby sitting opposite to you on the Tube -- can you see that girl rushing wildly and blindly away, pressing that same little mite's face to her breast in a hopeless attempt to shield it from the fumes? Can you see her face drawn in the most horrible of death agonies and the baby's lips covered with blood and mucus? A horrible description? A very horrible, yet very possible, fact.

Again, London was lucky to avoid being gassed during the war. This time, Germany had sufficient numbers of gas globes, but the 'Secret Service' knew this, and made it known to the Germans that Britain had them too, and would use them in large numbers against German cities if any fell on British soil.

Here we have an expert eyewitness describing two horrible new weapons, both of which were nearly used against civilians in the last war and which will certainly be used against civilians in the next war. So what's the problem? Simply that one of these existed and the other is -- I believe -- made up!
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  1. Daily Mail, 20 June 1922, pp. 9-10. All quotes taken from this article unless otherwise specified. [↩]