Remembering

In November 1917, Arthur Godfrey, the Chairman of Woking District Council, wrote to Sir Edward Carson complaining about the cursory nature of the death notices sent to bereaved relatives. His work for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Family Association and War Pensions Committee brought him into ‘daily contact with the relatives of our soldiers and sailors’. He asked that a letter be sent in the name of the Prime Minister ‘expressing appreciation of the government of the loyalty and self-sacrifice of the deceased and of sympathy with his family’. This was to be accompanied ‘with an assurance that the Government is determined to carry the war through to a successful issue and satisfactory peace so that the sacrifices made shall not have been made in vain’. This would ‘go a long way towards comforting and uplifting the bereaved – inspiring the people towards new courage and determination’, and was required for ‘strengthening the government and counteracting the poisonous and pernicious operations of the pacifists’.

The need to comfort the bereaved was a wartime as well as a post-war imperative and from the very start official initiatives were as much about convincing the bereaved of the justification of the sacrifice as about simply giving comfort. Pembroke Wickes at the War Office commented on this proposal on the usefulness of sending ‘a message of encouragement as an anti-toxin to Pro-German pacifist poison now being so freely scattered in stricken homes’.