When war broke out in 1914 there were five great European empires. Four were monarchies and one (French) a republic. By the end of the war three empires, the German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian had collapsed, one emperor (the Tsar) had been murdered and the ex-emperors of Germany and Austro-Hungary were in exile. The French empire survived, albeit only just short of bankruptcy, and only the British Empire still looked more or less as it had been in 1914, although under the surface great changes were beginning to make themselves felt.
As the law stood in 1914 once the king (George V) had declared war then the whole of the empire was automatically at war[*]. In general this was welcomed, even by organisations not necessarily favourably inclined towards the British, such as the Indian National Congress, formed in 1885. The one exception was South Africa where an attempted rising led by two ex-Boer generals was put down by two other ex-Boer generals. Whilst the British Empire at the time covered one third of the earth’s surface and contained a considerable amount of its population, this did not reflect its military strength, at least not on land. The Royal Navy was the world’s largest by far, but the British army, being an all-volunteer regular force was tiny by European standards with much of it scattered round the world in colonial garrisons. Apart from the Indian Army, which was almost as large/small as the British, the dominion armies were even tinier. The only realistic threat to Canada, since the United States had been prevented from seizing her in the War of 1812, was from the sea. Again, only a sea borne invasion could be launched against Australia and New Zealand, and those three dominions were amply defended by the British and their own navies. Similarly South Africa had little to fear from German Southwest Africa (now Namibia) and the Royal Navy maintained a major naval base in Simon’s Town. Each of these dominions, which would provide substantial reinforcements in time, had based their land forces on a part time militia, with a small regular cadre to provide staff officers and trainers.
While raising a Canadian army to send to the Western Front, Canada could make an immediate contribution in the shape of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Lord Strathcona had raised a regiment of Canadian cavalry, Lord Strathcona’s Horse, for the South African War, so it occurred to Andrew Hamilton Gault, a thirty-two year old Canadian who had served in that war in the Royal Canadian Dragoons and then in the Black Watch of Canada, and whose family had extensive business interests throughout Canada, that he might do the same for this war. He put up the sum of 100,000 Canadian dollars, about ten million today, to finance the raising of the new regiment. He obtained the permission of the Governor General, Arthur Duke of Connaught, Queen Victoria’s youngest son, called after the first Duke of Wellington, to name the regiment after his daughter, Princess Patricia. Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry recruited only men who had already served in the British Army or with the Canadian contingents in the South African War and who were not already members of Canadian militia units. By the end of August 1914, only four weeks after the declaration of War, the regiment had recruited 1,098 men, all but 50 of whom (mainly clerks and technicians) had previous military service, which allowed the battalion to move to France on 21 December, becoming a unit of the British 27th Division, transferring to the 3rd Canadian Division when that formation arrived in 1915.
Canada rapidly raised new volunteer battalions and augmented existing militia ones and sent four divisions to the Western Front, two in 1915 and another two in 1916. Conscription was introduced in 1918 and a few men sent to the front, arriving as the war ended. What was surprising to many were the recruiting statistics in Quebec where from 1.7 million French Canadians only 7,000 volunteers came forward, whereas the 400,000 English residents of that province produced 22,000. As this was surely a French war these figures seemed at odds, but according to this author’s Canadian grandfather, who enlisted in a Saskatchewan battalion in 1914, French Canadians felt they had been let down by France. After the Seven Years War (1756 – 1763) had determined that Britain, and not France, would rule North America, the French nobility and the generals and the rich had returned to France leaving behind those unable or unwilling to leave, mainly artisans and fur trappers. They did not therefore feel any loyalty to France, despite speaking French.
In late 1917 Field Marshal Haig, commanding the British Expeditionary Force, was ordered by Prime Minister Lloyd-George to take on a further stretch of the Western Front from the French, but was refused reinforcement from troops available in England. In order to create more divisions to cover the extra frontage he had to reduce infantry divisions from twelve battalions, four in each of a division’s three brigades, to nine, or brigades of three battalions. The Canadians were given the option of doing the same, which would have increased their divisions to six, turning the Canadian Corps into a Canadian Army which would mean that the Canadian commander, Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Currie, would be promoted to full general. Currie, however, insisted that he would prefer to have four strong divisions rather than six weak ones. The Canadian organisation did not change, and by 1918 the Canadian Corps effectively became the shock troops of the British Expeditionary Force.
India already had a regular volunteer army which despatched two divisions and a cavalry brigade to the Western Front, arriving in September 1914. This was followed by two cavalry divisions, a division to Persia to ensure the security of the British owned oil fields, three infantry divisions to Mesopotamia, two divisions to Egypt, a brigade to Basra and a division to Aden, a division to German East Africa, and a brigade to Gallipoli all while still maintaining the defence of India’s frontiers and internal security there. After the disaster of Gallipoli General Hamilton wrote ‘if only I had more Gurkhas I would never have been held up by the Turks’. In truth he should have said ‘if only I had more troops who knew what they were doing…’ The Western Front was the priority and the British simply could not support two major fronts fifteen hundred miles apart. As it was, of the 400,000 British Empire troops deployed at Gallipoli, only 29 Indian Infantry Brigade of three Gurkha and one Sikh battalions were trained, experienced, regular soldiers accustomed to working in that formation. Other regular British soldiers were there, but had not worked together until incorporated in the hastily formed 29th Division.
India and Nepal mobilised 1.7 million men between them for the war, and while a majority of Nepalis of military age served either in the Gurkha regiments of the British Indian Army or the Nepal army which manned Indian garrisons to release Indian regiments, only a tiny proportion, 1.7 million, of the Indian population of 320 million was enlisted. This was because the Indian army recruited only from those races deemed ‘martial’, who had soldiered loyally for the British and who had proved that they were competent soldiers, and these races, Rajputs, Dogras, Sikhs, Punjabi Mussalmans, Mahrattas and the rest, were a minority in India.
Australia quickly raised volunteer units to augment the existing militia, and their blooding was at Gallipoli. Magnificent material but inexperienced and only partially trained they suffered grievously and achieved little. By the time they arrived on the Western Front they had acquired that experience and provided a valuable four divisions. New Zealand, with a much smaller population than Australia mobilised 129,000 men and sent a division to the Western Front, via Gallipoli.
South Africa mobilised 299,000 from a white population of 9.9 million, mainly for service in the German colonies of Southwest Africa, East Africa, Togo and Cameroon, but with a brigade on the Western Front. The African campaigns also involved Empire troops from Rhodesia, the West Indies and battalions of the King’s African Rifles, the Royal West African Frontier Force and the Gold Coast Regiment.
In 1917 it became apparent that there were many tasks on the Western Front that did not necessarily have to be carried out by fully trained soldiers and so the Labour Corps was formed to build roads, unload cargo at the docks, obtain timber, build defence works and suchlike tasks. Contingents came from China, the West Indies, India and South Africa. Although most were civilians, albeit subject to military law, the South African contingent was composed of black South Africans who had been enlisted into the army, but who arrived without weapons. Although these men would not normally be working in the front line, Haig insisted that as soldiers they must be armed for their own protection, which caused a row with the South African government who objected to the arming of blacks, or their training in the use of weapons. Haig won and the South African labour corps were issued with rifles and trained in their use.
The country with the highest proportion of men mobilised to be killed in the First World War was Australia with 14.5 per cent, followed by New Zealand with 13.2 percent, and the United Kingdom with 12.3 per cent. In terms of actual numbers killed the UK led the field by a wide margin losing 702,000 with India and Nepal next at 70,000. Australia had 60,000 killed, Canada 51,000, New Zealand 17,000. In terms of percentage of the entire population killed it was Newfoundland that suffered most. When the Dominion of Canada was formed in 1867 with the combination of the province of Canada and the colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, with the rest of what we now know as Canada joining when developed and populated, Newfoundland declined to join, and remained a separate colony until 1949, when it finally became part of Canada. Its population in 1914 was 200,000 of whom 12,000 were mobilised and 1,200 were killed in both the Newfoundland Regiment (Royal after the war) and in the Royal and Royal Canadian navies. Newfoundland therefore lost six percent of her entire population, compared to 1.5 percent for the UK and New Zealand, 1.4 percent for Australia and 0.7 percent for Canada.
Overall in this war the British Empire mobilised just over nine million men (5.7 million from the UK) and lost just under one million dead or around ten percent of those mobilised.
[*] By 1939 the law had changed and Dominions could decide for themselves whether to declare war. In the event all did.
All new to me. I knew the highlights but not this detail. Why isn’t this historical detail taught in our schools? Fascinating.