On the outbreak of war in August 1914, Britain had 247,432 regular troops. About 120,000 of these were in the British Expeditionary Army and the rest were stationed abroad. It was clear that more soldiers would be needed to defeat the German Army.
On 7th August, 1914, Lord Kitchener, the war minister, immediately began a recruiting campaign by calling for men aged between 19 and 30 to join the British Army. At first this was very successful with an average of 33,000 men joining every day. Three weeks later Kitchener raised the recruiting age to 35 and by the middle of September over 500,000 men had volunteered their services.
At the beginning of the war the army had strict specifications about who could become soldiers. Men joining the army had to be at least 5ft 6in tall and a chest measurement of 35 inches. By May 1915 soldiers only had to be 5ft 3in and the age limit was raised to 40. In July the army agreed to the formation of 'Bantam' battalions, composed of men between 5ft and 5ft 3in in height.
To help with recruitment David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was given the task of setting up a British War Propaganda Bureau (WPB). Lloyd George, appointed the successful writer and fellow Liberal MP, Charles Masterman as head of the organization.
During the first few months of the war the War Propaganda Bureau published pamphlets such as the Report on Alleged German Outrages, that gave credence to the idea that the German Army had systematically tortured Belgian civilians. Other pamphlets published by the WPB that helped with recruitment included To Arms! (Arthur Conan Doyle), The Barbarism in Berlin (G. K. Chesterton), The New Army (Rudyard Kipling) and Liberty, A Statement of the British Case (Arnold Bennett).
The British government also began a successful poster campaign. Artists such as Saville Lumley, Alfred Leete, Frank Brangwyn and Norman Lindsay, produced a series of posters urging men to join the British Army. The desire to fight continued into 1915 and by the end of that year some two million men had volunteered their services.
Recruits taking the oath in 1914.