(1) Personal Column of The Times (8th July, 1915)

Jack F.G. If you are not in khaki by the 20th I shall cut you dead. Ethel M.

 

(2) Town Crier in Deal in Kent (September, 1914).

Oyez! Oyez! The White Feather Brigade. Ladies wanted to present to young men of Deal who have no one dependent on them the Order of the White Feather for shirking their duty in not offering their services to uphold the Union Jack of Old England.


(3) The Bystander (September, 1914).

Men who put on uniform as a result of exhortation by squires, parsons, retired officers, employers, schoolmasters, leader-writers, politicians, cartoonists, poets, music-hall singers and women are not volunteers; they are conscripts. They have gone in because it would have been so infernally unpleasant to have stayed out.

 

(4) James Lovegrove was only sixteen when he joined the army on the outbreak of the First World War.

On my way to work one morning a group of women surrounded me. They started shouting and yelling at me, calling me all sorts of names for not being a soldier! Do you know what they did? They struck a white feather in my coat, meaning I was a coward. Oh, I did feel dreadful, so ashamed.

I went to the recruiting office. The sergeant there couldn't stop laughing at me, saying things like "Looking for your father, sonny?", and "Come back next year when the war's over!" Well, I must have looked so crestfallen that he said "Let's check your measurements again". You see, I was five foot six inches and only about eight and a half stone. This time he made me out to be about six feet tall and twelve stone, at least, that is what he wrote down. All lies of course - but I was in!"

 

(5) William Brooks was interviewed about his experiences during the First World War in 1993. He explained why he joined the British Army in 1915.

Once war broke out the situation at home became awful, because people did not like to see men or lads of army age walking about in civilian clothing, or not in uniform of some sort, especially in a military town like Woolwich. Women were the worst. They would come up to you in the street and give you a white feather, or stick it in the lapel of your coat. A white feather is the sign of cowardice, so they meant you were a coward and that you should be in the army doing your bit for king and country.

It got so bad it wasn't safe to go out. So in 1915 at the age of seventeen I volunteered under the Lord Derby scheme. Now that was a thing where once you applied to join you were not called up at once, but were given a blue armband with a red crown to wear. This told people that you were waiting to be called up, and that kept you safe, or fairly safe, because if you were seen to be wearing it for too long the abuse in the street would soon start again.

(6) Words of Harold Begbie's song Fall In that was written in 1914.

How will you fare, sonny, how will you fare
In the far-off winter night
When you sit by the fire in the old man's chair
And your neighbours talk of the fight?

Will you slink away, as it were from a blow,
Your old head shamed and bent?
Or say, 'I was not with the first to go,
But I went, thank God, I went'?