100 Years Ago
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2016-12-09/register/athens-grows-anxious-f0x5n3lzl
DECEMBER 9, 1916
Athens grows anxious
The blockade of Greece by the Allied squadrons became effective yesterday. The consequences must be very speedily felt, and the fervid Royalists should soon perceive whither the folly of King Constantine has led them. Greece has been on comparatively short commons for nearly a year, and the stoppage of steamer traffic will be felt within a week. There is corn in the northern districts, but the severance of the railways will prevent its distribution.
We are not surprised to learn that acute anxiety prevails in Athens; the situation there is grave. We are still less surprised to be told that the Royalist Ministry is not so truculent now, and that messages of a more conciliatory character are arriving. They come too late - especially as they convey no indication of any change of attitude on the part of King Constantine.
There is only one possible policy for the Allies towards Royalist Greece, and it must be enforced with rapidity and resolute determination. We have repeatedly urged that there is no time to be lost, and the bulletins from the Macedonian front confirm our view. They show that the German and Bulgarian forces are attacking in the region of Monastir with increasing vigour. Reinforcements may take some time to concentrate in Macedonia, but the appearance in the field of fresh forces opposed to General Sarrail is a contingency which must be considered. The shortening of the enemy’s front in Rumania may permit some seven Bulgarian and Turkish divisions to be moved south.
It will be obvious that any plan designed to meet these possibilities must include a firm policy in regard to King Constantine and the Greek Royalists, and the blockade may be regarded as the first step. We have paltered with King Constantine and his backers far too long. They should be shown that the methods of tergiversation which have served them in the past are no longer of any avail. King Constantine is manifestly playing for time. He must not be given the time he seeks. When Greece, with empty granaries and storehouses, discovers the results of the stoppage of sea traffic to her ports, she will realize with dismay the predicament into which she has been led by her faithless King and his misguided advisers.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2016-12-10/register/a-war-cabinet-ds8t79pfj
december 10, 1916
A war cabinet
Mr Lloyd George’s Ministry is without doubt the boldest political conception of our time. Some indeed will regard it as a constitutional revolution. Nobody would deny that it is the most drastic, and at the same time the most obviously necessary, overhauling of our machinery of Government which has been made in living memory.
The chief reforms on which Mr Lloyd George has decided under the stress of war are two: (1) The reduction in the size of the Cabinet from 23 members to five, and their complete concentration on the war - a change long urged in the columns of The Times. Not merely is the unwieldy Cabinet of modern times dismissed at one stroke, but the principle is established that departmental duties shall be divorced, as a war measure, from the supreme authority. (2) The association with the business of Government of businessmen and other experts, who owe none of their success in their own spheres to politics, and who in several cases are not members of either house of Parliament. Only four members of the late Cabinet remain in charge of their old Departments: Chamberlain, Lord Robert Cecil, Mr Duke, and Sir F E Smith. Ten members in all of the late Cabinet remain in office, but Mr Lloyd George, Lord Curzon, Mr Bonar Law, Mr Henderson, Mr Balfour and Mr Long take up new duties.
The War Cabinet answers fully the requirements laid down by Mr Lloyd George in the recent plan which he submitted to Mr Asquith. It is smaller than the old War Committee of seven. Its four principal members, freed from departmental duties, will be able to give their undivided attention to the conduct of the war. The arrangement by which Mr Bonar Law will act as Leader of the House of Commons meets another of Mr Lloyd George’s objections to the old system. He held that it was impossible for the Prime Minister to carry out his Parliamentary duties and be an effective Chairman of the War Council at the same time. Mr Lloyd George’s critics were waiting to convict him of inconsistency in this matter, but he a cut the knot by a characteristically bold stroke.
The new War Cabinet met for the first time on Saturday, and sat all day. It will meet daily, and will be virtually in permanent session.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2016-12-12/register/the-woman-who-works-2b6m38bpf
on this day: december 12, 1916
The woman who works
We are beginning to realize that we must set free for military service numbers of young men now engaged as clerks. They must largely be replaced by women, and it is most important that women of the right training and character should be employed. The average woman has not been so well trained as the average man. The rapidity and thoroughness essential for skilled clerk’s work do not, as a rule, distinguish the sisters of the men who at present do such work. Women have been kept back, and the result is that to replace an ordinarily skilled man a more than ordinary woman is required.
For Government service only women of university or corresponding training are of use. There is still a fair supply. Yet their services have been secured by no means to the full extent, because the Government deliberately drags behind the average rate of payment for educated women. Women clerks in responsible positions are offered salaries of from £2 to 25s a week; and the latter rate is the commonest.
There are, roughly, three classes of employed women. The first may be called “the girls who live at home”. Their salary is simply pocket money. They are lodged and mainly fed by their parents. When these two items of expenditure are provided for, even 25s a week gives a pleasant margin for frocks and holidays. The employer is subsidized by the parents of his employee. It has been one of the great drawbacks of women in the labour market that so many employers can face with equanimity the position that “Half a man’s wage is plenty for them.”
Even £3 a week means a very hard life for a woman of refinement. That there should be a decent standard of living for our middle-class women workers is of more than temporary importance. More women will have to work and more work will be open to them when the war is over. Not only will many young men, potential workers and husbands, return no more, but many will be reluctant to return to their former limited occupations. Yet the dull routine must be done, and adequately trained women will have to do it. It is for the employers, and above all for the Government, to see that prospects are opened to women more encouraging than those offered by a salary of 30s a week.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2016-12-13/register/seamens-demand-for-action-tb90w3t7p
DECEMBER 13, 1916
Seamen’s demand for action
We publish today an appeal by the Imperial Merchant Service Guild in the case of Captain Blaikie, the commander of the Anchor liner Caledonia, who is a prisoner in German hands. According to German official sources, on December 4, in the Mediterranean, the Caledonia attempted to ram a German submarine. Just before the steamer’s bows struck, the Germans fired a torpedo, the Caledonia was sunk, and Captain Blaikie taken prisoner. The IMSG fears, with good reason, that unless the Government takes swift and stern steps he may share the fate of Captain Fryatt, of the steamer Brussels, who tried to ram the German submarine U33 on March 28, was tried by court-martial and executed. The whole country demands that Captain Blaikie shall not be murdered in like fashion.
The German account says that the Caledonia attempted to ram the submarine “without having been previously attacked”. But if Captain Blaikie had waited until he was torpedoed he would have had no chance of defending his ship. The Germans claim the unheard-of right to treat as pirates merchant captains who attempt to defend their ships. Such an atrocious claim is repudiated by this country. It is being suggested that the German Government should be warned that any “punishment” meted out to Captain Blaikie will be followed by precisely similar treatment of one of the numerous U-boat commanders who are now our prisoners. We do not think that such warning will suffice. Germany is entirely callous about the lives of her junior officers, and will care nothing about the fate of one of the obscure lieutenants who command her U-boats. Our view is that the Government should intimate at once that, if any attempt is made to harm Captain Blaikie, they will select the German officer, naval or military, of the highest rank now prisoner in these islands, and deal with him in precisely the same way. Such a warning Germany would understand. We must end for ever the German doctrine that the merchant captain who tries to ram a submarine is not entitled to the usual treatment of belligerents, and we shall only do it by matching the lives of prisoners - of the highest available rank - against those of the incomparable commanders of our mercantile marine.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/martyrdom-of-the-armenians-w37z2xmcm
DECEMBER 14, 1916
Martyrdom of the Armenians
The Blue-book published today upon the treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire tells the story of the tragic destruction of an inoffensive and intelligent race during the year 1915. The documents form a long catalogue of horrors for which hardly any parallel can be found in ancient or modern history. There were perhaps 1,800,000 Armenians dwelling within the Turkish Empire at the beginning of 1915. A process of “deportation” was inaugurated, and the Armenians in Asiatic Turkey were torn from their homes. It is estimated that about 600,000 are still alive, though under wretched conditions, in exile within Turkish territory; 600,000 were either forcibly converted to Islam, or are hiding in the mountains, or have escaped beyond the Turkish frontier, and about 600,000 have been done to death under circumstances of almost inconceivable brutality. The Blue-book, which is terrible reading, teems with examples of the awful treatment meted out to the Armenian women and girls.
One fact alone will suffice to show the callous thoroughness with which the dispersal and partial extirpation of the Armenians was conducted. Last year there were about 580,000 Armenians in the vilayets of Erzrum, Bitlis, and Van. When these areas passed into Russian hands only 12,100 Armenians were found alive. The rest were dead or driven forth.
The massacres were systematic and deliberate. They were planned far in advance at Constantinople. District after district was dealt with in turn, until throughout Asiatic Turkey the Armenian quarters in towns and villages had been depopulated. The gendarmerie and local administrators, the Kurds and other tribesmen who wrought the worst crimes, were all culpable; but the guilt rests primarily upon the leaders of the Young Turks. The Turkish Government conceived the scheme, yet the guilt does not end in Constantinople. “The Times History of the War”, in its chapter on these atrocities, declared that Germany “signified in the clearest manner that the Young Turks’ attempt to exterminate their Armenian subjects was right in German eyes.” No protest has gone forth from Berlin. Herself stained with innumerable barbarities, Germany has found in the authors of these massacres comrades entirely to her liking.
DECEMBER 9, 1916
Athens grows anxious
The blockade of Greece by the Allied squadrons became effective yesterday. The consequences must be very speedily felt, and the fervid Royalists should soon perceive whither the folly of King Constantine has led them. Greece has been on comparatively short commons for nearly a year, and the stoppage of steamer traffic will be felt within a week. There is corn in the northern districts, but the severance of the railways will prevent its distribution.
We are not surprised to learn that acute anxiety prevails in Athens; the situation there is grave. We are still less surprised to be told that the Royalist Ministry is not so truculent now, and that messages of a more conciliatory character are arriving. They come too late - especially as they convey no indication of any change of attitude on the part of King Constantine.
There is only one possible policy for the Allies towards Royalist Greece, and it must be enforced with rapidity and resolute determination. We have repeatedly urged that there is no time to be lost, and the bulletins from the Macedonian front confirm our view. They show that the German and Bulgarian forces are attacking in the region of Monastir with increasing vigour. Reinforcements may take some time to concentrate in Macedonia, but the appearance in the field of fresh forces opposed to General Sarrail is a contingency which must be considered. The shortening of the enemy’s front in Rumania may permit some seven Bulgarian and Turkish divisions to be moved south.
It will be obvious that any plan designed to meet these possibilities must include a firm policy in regard to King Constantine and the Greek Royalists, and the blockade may be regarded as the first step. We have paltered with King Constantine and his backers far too long. They should be shown that the methods of tergiversation which have served them in the past are no longer of any avail. King Constantine is manifestly playing for time. He must not be given the time he seeks. When Greece, with empty granaries and storehouses, discovers the results of the stoppage of sea traffic to her ports, she will realize with dismay the predicament into which she has been led by her faithless King and his misguided advisers.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2016-12-10/register/a-war-cabinet-ds8t79pfj
december 10, 1916
A war cabinet
Mr Lloyd George’s Ministry is without doubt the boldest political conception of our time. Some indeed will regard it as a constitutional revolution. Nobody would deny that it is the most drastic, and at the same time the most obviously necessary, overhauling of our machinery of Government which has been made in living memory.
The chief reforms on which Mr Lloyd George has decided under the stress of war are two: (1) The reduction in the size of the Cabinet from 23 members to five, and their complete concentration on the war - a change long urged in the columns of The Times. Not merely is the unwieldy Cabinet of modern times dismissed at one stroke, but the principle is established that departmental duties shall be divorced, as a war measure, from the supreme authority. (2) The association with the business of Government of businessmen and other experts, who owe none of their success in their own spheres to politics, and who in several cases are not members of either house of Parliament. Only four members of the late Cabinet remain in charge of their old Departments: Chamberlain, Lord Robert Cecil, Mr Duke, and Sir F E Smith. Ten members in all of the late Cabinet remain in office, but Mr Lloyd George, Lord Curzon, Mr Bonar Law, Mr Henderson, Mr Balfour and Mr Long take up new duties.
The War Cabinet answers fully the requirements laid down by Mr Lloyd George in the recent plan which he submitted to Mr Asquith. It is smaller than the old War Committee of seven. Its four principal members, freed from departmental duties, will be able to give their undivided attention to the conduct of the war. The arrangement by which Mr Bonar Law will act as Leader of the House of Commons meets another of Mr Lloyd George’s objections to the old system. He held that it was impossible for the Prime Minister to carry out his Parliamentary duties and be an effective Chairman of the War Council at the same time. Mr Lloyd George’s critics were waiting to convict him of inconsistency in this matter, but he a cut the knot by a characteristically bold stroke.
The new War Cabinet met for the first time on Saturday, and sat all day. It will meet daily, and will be virtually in permanent session.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2016-12-12/register/the-woman-who-works-2b6m38bpf
on this day: december 12, 1916
The woman who works
We are beginning to realize that we must set free for military service numbers of young men now engaged as clerks. They must largely be replaced by women, and it is most important that women of the right training and character should be employed. The average woman has not been so well trained as the average man. The rapidity and thoroughness essential for skilled clerk’s work do not, as a rule, distinguish the sisters of the men who at present do such work. Women have been kept back, and the result is that to replace an ordinarily skilled man a more than ordinary woman is required.
For Government service only women of university or corresponding training are of use. There is still a fair supply. Yet their services have been secured by no means to the full extent, because the Government deliberately drags behind the average rate of payment for educated women. Women clerks in responsible positions are offered salaries of from £2 to 25s a week; and the latter rate is the commonest.
There are, roughly, three classes of employed women. The first may be called “the girls who live at home”. Their salary is simply pocket money. They are lodged and mainly fed by their parents. When these two items of expenditure are provided for, even 25s a week gives a pleasant margin for frocks and holidays. The employer is subsidized by the parents of his employee. It has been one of the great drawbacks of women in the labour market that so many employers can face with equanimity the position that “Half a man’s wage is plenty for them.”
Even £3 a week means a very hard life for a woman of refinement. That there should be a decent standard of living for our middle-class women workers is of more than temporary importance. More women will have to work and more work will be open to them when the war is over. Not only will many young men, potential workers and husbands, return no more, but many will be reluctant to return to their former limited occupations. Yet the dull routine must be done, and adequately trained women will have to do it. It is for the employers, and above all for the Government, to see that prospects are opened to women more encouraging than those offered by a salary of 30s a week.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2016-12-13/register/seamens-demand-for-action-tb90w3t7p
DECEMBER 13, 1916
Seamen’s demand for action
We publish today an appeal by the Imperial Merchant Service Guild in the case of Captain Blaikie, the commander of the Anchor liner Caledonia, who is a prisoner in German hands. According to German official sources, on December 4, in the Mediterranean, the Caledonia attempted to ram a German submarine. Just before the steamer’s bows struck, the Germans fired a torpedo, the Caledonia was sunk, and Captain Blaikie taken prisoner. The IMSG fears, with good reason, that unless the Government takes swift and stern steps he may share the fate of Captain Fryatt, of the steamer Brussels, who tried to ram the German submarine U33 on March 28, was tried by court-martial and executed. The whole country demands that Captain Blaikie shall not be murdered in like fashion.
The German account says that the Caledonia attempted to ram the submarine “without having been previously attacked”. But if Captain Blaikie had waited until he was torpedoed he would have had no chance of defending his ship. The Germans claim the unheard-of right to treat as pirates merchant captains who attempt to defend their ships. Such an atrocious claim is repudiated by this country. It is being suggested that the German Government should be warned that any “punishment” meted out to Captain Blaikie will be followed by precisely similar treatment of one of the numerous U-boat commanders who are now our prisoners. We do not think that such warning will suffice. Germany is entirely callous about the lives of her junior officers, and will care nothing about the fate of one of the obscure lieutenants who command her U-boats. Our view is that the Government should intimate at once that, if any attempt is made to harm Captain Blaikie, they will select the German officer, naval or military, of the highest rank now prisoner in these islands, and deal with him in precisely the same way. Such a warning Germany would understand. We must end for ever the German doctrine that the merchant captain who tries to ram a submarine is not entitled to the usual treatment of belligerents, and we shall only do it by matching the lives of prisoners - of the highest available rank - against those of the incomparable commanders of our mercantile marine.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/martyrdom-of-the-armenians-w37z2xmcm
DECEMBER 14, 1916
Martyrdom of the Armenians
The Blue-book published today upon the treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire tells the story of the tragic destruction of an inoffensive and intelligent race during the year 1915. The documents form a long catalogue of horrors for which hardly any parallel can be found in ancient or modern history. There were perhaps 1,800,000 Armenians dwelling within the Turkish Empire at the beginning of 1915. A process of “deportation” was inaugurated, and the Armenians in Asiatic Turkey were torn from their homes. It is estimated that about 600,000 are still alive, though under wretched conditions, in exile within Turkish territory; 600,000 were either forcibly converted to Islam, or are hiding in the mountains, or have escaped beyond the Turkish frontier, and about 600,000 have been done to death under circumstances of almost inconceivable brutality. The Blue-book, which is terrible reading, teems with examples of the awful treatment meted out to the Armenian women and girls.
One fact alone will suffice to show the callous thoroughness with which the dispersal and partial extirpation of the Armenians was conducted. Last year there were about 580,000 Armenians in the vilayets of Erzrum, Bitlis, and Van. When these areas passed into Russian hands only 12,100 Armenians were found alive. The rest were dead or driven forth.
The massacres were systematic and deliberate. They were planned far in advance at Constantinople. District after district was dealt with in turn, until throughout Asiatic Turkey the Armenian quarters in towns and villages had been depopulated. The gendarmerie and local administrators, the Kurds and other tribesmen who wrought the worst crimes, were all culpable; but the guilt rests primarily upon the leaders of the Young Turks. The Turkish Government conceived the scheme, yet the guilt does not end in Constantinople. “The Times History of the War”, in its chapter on these atrocities, declared that Germany “signified in the clearest manner that the Young Turks’ attempt to exterminate their Armenian subjects was right in German eyes.” No protest has gone forth from Berlin. Herself stained with innumerable barbarities, Germany has found in the authors of these massacres comrades entirely to her liking.