In fact, Barker's prediction that with the advent of war the state would enjoy its high midsummer of credit proved to be only half right. Certainly, the war years did bring with them a vast increase in the scope of the state's activities – in the pursuit of a national, corporate war effort it came to employ more people, levy more taxes and regulate more activities than had ever seemed possible before. In this transformation of the state into a large-scale ‘enterprise’ association the lesser associational life of its citizens was not swamped altogether. A volunteer army was raised between 1914 and 1916 which contained many battalions whose members were drawn from the same locality, the same profession or industry, and even the same clubs and churches, such that units arose with subtitles like North-East Railway, First Football, Church Lads, First Public Works, Empire, Arts and Crafts, and Forest of Dean Pioneers. These were the so-called ‘pals’ battalions, and they were designed to draw on the polyarchic structures of British life, tapping the loyalty men felt towards local and private bodies alongside the loyalty they felt towards the nation as a whole. But although the British army could claim to be made up of ‘fellows’ and their ‘fellowships’, this plurality-in-unity had little bearing on the national cause itself, and none on the ways in which it was pursued.