Escape From Berlin.

This article was published in the Daily News and describes the correspondent’s escape from Berlin at the start of the Great War.

Mr H W. Nevinson was a hardened professional who had reported on the 1897 war between Greece and Turkey and also the Boer War. He became one of the most notable journalists of his time.

My Way Of Escape

Before dawn on August 6th a string of motors was waiting outside the Embassy, sent by the Kaiser's orders to convey the Ambassador and his staff to a local station, a few miles away from Berlin. Again by the courtesy of Sir Edward Goschen, a few of us correspondents were invited to join the staff, and I hardly realized at the time from what a hideous destiny that invitation preserved me. I suppose I should have been kept shut up in Ruhleben or some similar camp for four and a half years ; I should have seen nothing of the war in Belgium and France at its beginning ; I should not have shared the splendour and the tragedy of the Dardanelles campaign ; I should not have known the intrigues in Athens, or the disastrous uselessness of the early attempt at Salonika, or the meaning of the advance from Egypt upon Palestine ; nor should I have been present at the final advance of the Allied Armies on the Western Front in August, 1918, or have heard the trumpet sound for the armistice in the market-square of Mons, or have accompanied our vanguard in the march up to the Rhine at Cologne. Of all those historic scenes I should have remained ignorant.

But from such loss our Ambassador saved me, and for twenty-four hours his train carried us all slowly lumbering through North Germany to the Dutch frontier.

On our way we passed or were impeded by uncounted vans decorated with boughs of trees and crammed with reservists going to the Belgian front. The men had now chalked "Nach Bruxelles" or "Nach London" as well as " Nach Paris " on the vans, and at every station they were met by bands of Red Cross girls bringing coffee, wine, and food.

At all the larger stations, too, the news of our train's approach had been signalled, and to cheer us on our way all the old men, boys and women of the place had flocked down with any musical instruments they could collect, and, standing thick on the platform, they played for us the German national tunes, "Deutschland, Deutschland" predominating. They played with the persistence of the " German bands" known to me in childhood. Sometimes, to impress their patriotism more distinctly upon us, they brought their instruments close up to the carriage windows, and the shitting tubes of the trombones came right into the carriage. Silent and unmoved, as an Englishman should, sat Sir Edward Goschen, looking steadily in front of him, with hands on his knees, making as though no sight or sound had reached his senses.

Sweating Sickness

In 1517 Sir Thomas More was the Master of Requests an office he held from 1514, he was also a member His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council.

1517 saw the third outbreak of Sweating Sickness’ which was a more severe epidemic. In the midst of this terrible outbreak Thomas More conveys his concerns. -

"We are in grief and danger as never before. Many are dying all round us, and almost everybody at Oxford, Cambridge and London has been laid up within the last few days. Many of our best and most honorable friends have perished: among these - I grieve for the grief it will give you - Andrew Ammonio, in whom good letters and all good men have suffered a great loss. He thought himself protected against contagion by his temperance in food. It was due to this, he thought, that his whole household escaped, whilst almost everybody he met had their families laid up. He boasted to me and to many others of this, a few hours before he died. For in the Sweating Sickness death always comes, if it does come, on the first day. I, with my wife and children, am as yet untouched: the rest of my household has recovered. I tell you, there is less danger on a battle front than in London. And now, i hear, it is beginning to rage in Calais just as we are being driven there on diplomatic business - as if it were not enough to have lived among infection, but one must follow it when it goes."

A description of Sweating Sickness can be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1911:

SWEATING-SICKNESS.

A remarkable form of disease, not known in England before, attracted attention at the very beginning of the reign of Henry VII. It was known indeed a few days after the landing of Henry at Milford Haven on the 7th of August 1485, as there is clear evidence of its being spoken of before the battle of Bosworth on the 22nd of August. Soon after the arrival of Henry in London on the 28th of August it broke out in the capital, and caused great mortality. This alarming malady soon became known as the sweating-sickness. It was regarded as being quite distinct from the plague, the pestilential fever or other epidemics previously known, not only by the special symptom which gave it its name, but also by its extremely rapid and fatal course.

From 1485 nothing more was heard of it till 1507, when the second outbreak occurred, which was much less fatal than the first. In 1517 was a third and much more severe epidemic. In Oxford and Cambridge it was very fatal, as well as in other towns, where in some cases half the population are said to have perished. There is evidence of the disease having spread to Calais and Antwerp, but with these exceptions it was confined to England.

In 1528 the disease recurred for the fourth time, and with great severity. It first showed itself in London at the end of May, and speedily spread over the whole of England, though not into Scotland or Ireland. In London the mortality was very great; the court was broken up, and Henry VIII. left London, frequently changing his residence. The most remarkable fact about this epidemic is that it spread over the Continent, suddenly appearing at Hamburg, and spreading so rapidly that in a few weeks more than a thousand persons died. Thus was the terrible sweating-sickness started on a destructive course, during which it caused fearful mortality throughout eastern Europe. France, Italy and the southern countries were spared. It spread much in the same way as cholera, passing, in one direction, from north to south, arriving at Switzerland in December, in another northwards to Denmark, Sweden and Norway, also eastwards to Lithuania, Poland and Russia, and westwards to Flanders and Holland, unless indeed the epidemic, which declared itself simultaneously at Antwerp and Amsterdam on the morning of the 27th of September, came from England direct. In each place which it affected it prevailed for a short time only - generally not more than a fortnight. By the end of the year it had entirely disappeared, except in eastern Switzerland, where it lingered into the next year;' and the terrible "English sweat" has never appeared again, at least in the same form, on the Continent.

England was, however, destined to suffer from one more outbreak of the disease, which occurred in 1551, and with regard to this we have the great advantage of an account by an eyewitness, John Kaye or Caius. the eminent physician.

Symptoms

The symptoms as described by Caius and others were as follows. The disease began very suddenly with a sense of apprehension, followed by cold shivers (sometimes very violent), giddiness, headache and severe pains in the neck, shoulders and limbs, with great prostration. After the cold stage, which might last from half-an-hour to three hours, followed the stage of heat and sweating. The characteristic sweat broke out suddenly, and, as it seemed to those accustomed to the disease, without any obvious cause. With the sweat, or after that was poured out, came a sense of heat, and with this headache and delirium, rapid pulse and intense thirst. Palpitation and pain in the heart were frequent symptoms. No eruption of any kind on the skin was generally observed; Caius makes no allusion to such a symptom. In the later stages there was either general prostration and collapse, or an irresistible tendency to sleep, which was thought to be fatal if the patient were permitted to give way to it. The malady was ' Guggenbiihl, Der englische Schweiss in der Schweiz (Lichtensteig, 1838).

Remarkably rapid in its course, being sometimes fatal even in two or three hours, and some patients died in less than that time. More commonly it was protracted to a period of twelve to twenty-four hours, beyond which it rarely lasted. Those who survived for twenty-four hours were considered safe.

The disease, unlike the plague, was not especially fatal to the poor, but rather, as Caius affirms, attacked the richer sort and those who were free livers according to the custom of England in those days. "They which had this sweat sore with peril of death were either men of wealth, ease or welfare, or of the poorer sort, such as were idle persons, good ale drinkers and taverne haunters." Causes. - Some attributed the disease to the English climate, its moisture and its fogs, or to the intemperate habits of the English people, and to the frightful want of cleanliness in their houses and surroundings which is noticed by Erasmus in a well-known passage, and about which Caius is equally explicit. But we must conclude that climate, season, and manner of life were not adequate, either separately or collectively, to produce the disease, though each may have acted sometimes as a predisposing cause. The sweating sickness was in fact, to use modern language, a specific infective disease, in the same sense as plague, typhus, scarlatina or malaria.

The only disease of modern times which bears any resemblance to the sweating-sickness is that known as miliary fever ("` Schweiss friesel," "suette miliaire" or the "Picardy sweat"), a malady which has been repeatedly observed in France, Italy and southern Germany, but not in the United Kingdom. It is characterized by intense sweating, and occurs in limited epidemics, not lasting in each place more than a week or two (at least in an intense form). On the other hand, the attack lasts longer than the sweating-sickness did, is always accompanied by eruption of vesicles, and is not usually fatal. The first clearly described epidemic was in 1718 (though probably it existed before), and the last in 1861. Between these dates some one hundred and seventy-five epidemics have been counted in France alone.

Alan Williams arrives in Parliament

Alan Williams was elected as a Member of Parliament with the victorious Labour Party in 1964 for Swansea West.

He recalls his first days as a newly elected member.

“I came in, put my coat in the cloakroom and went to look for my hanger. The fact that i was a marginal member was bitterly rubbed in for me when i found my hanger with 'Williams' on it had one set of initials crossed out and my initials written in......in pencil. They weren't going to waste a good label.

I went to the chamber for the swearing in. You can imagine it. I was thirty-four; there was Harold Wilson and all the cabinet sitting just two rows below me, and there opposite, looking very dejected, all the outgoing famous Tory faces. Tudor Watkins, the Breconshire member, was sitting next to me - he would be in his mid-sixties at that time - and i turned to him and said, "Tudor, it must be marvelous to be on this side of the house after thirteen years over there?"

"Yes, my boy," he said. "The sun gets in your eyes on the other side of the House."

The Small 1964 Labour Majority

The 1964 General Election saw a victory for Harold Wilson’s Labour party who secured an overall majority in the House of Commons by 4 seats.

Tony Benn in his book ‘Last Time’ by authors Austin Mitchell and David Wienir, reflects on those early days and the precarious position the majority party had with such a small margin.

“There is an MP for Hartlepool, Ted Leadbetter. He was elected in 1964 and we'd been in power about a week when he wrote to me. He said, "I'm writing to complain about a telegraph pole that is outside the house of a constituent. I've decided to withdraw support from the government until the telegraph pole is removed."

We had a majority of four. I wrote to him asking him to come and have a talk about it. He said, "I'm not coming to see you until the telegraph pole is removed."

So i told the Chief Whip. Ted Leadbetter is a lovely guy, former headmaster, and i said to him, "If the government fell after we'd been out of office for thirteen years, and people asked why it fell, it wouldn't go down too well that it was because Mr. Benn wouldn't remove a telegraph pole from outside a house of a constituent." That's the sort of pressure there was.”

Back From Switzerland

This article published in the Eastbourne Gazette gives an interesting (if flowery and perhaps over patriotic) personal account of how a couple from Eastbourne made their way home from Switzerland in late August 1914.

On a side note I loved the expression – “In times of difficulty everyone can find opportunities of usefulness.” Perhaps a little nudge to prick the conscience of many a reader!

Back From Champery.

Mr and Mrs A.L. Franklin’s Return.

No modern Xenophon will be needed to tell the story of the return, not of 10,000 Greeks, but of a like number of English tourists, who found themselves in Switzerland at the beginning of August, when their means of returning was for a time more or less completely cut off. Some who hastened homewards with the utmost precipitation have already narrated their experiences. Others, whose engagements admitted of their prolonging their stay, were sagacious enough to accept the advice of the English Consuls and thereby avoided many risks and hardships.

Instead of spending three weeks abroad as they intended, Mr. and Mrs. A.L. Franklin (Miller Down, 54, Upperton Road) were away from Eastbourne five weeks. It was on the 26th July that they arrived at Champery, a place in Switzerland close to the French frontier and within three hours of Cal-de-conx, where the Swiss soldiers were guarding the frontier and could be seen coming down with their mules in order to convey provisions to military posts high up on the mountains.

Mr and Mrs Franklin journeyed to Switzerland to see their son Leslie (aged sixteen) who is staying in the house of a major in the Swiss army. In times of difficulty everyone can find opportunities of usefulness. Mr L. Franklin it seems has been busily engaged in cycling backwards and forwards to the post office, where he has been of service to tourists who required assistance in sending telegrams all of which have to written in French.

Hotelkeepers Reduce Their Tariffs

Mr A.L Franklin (who is a member of the firm of Miller and Franklin, Terminus Road) and Mrs Franklin returned to Eastbourne on Thursday Evening and on the following day the former gave a representative of this journal a very concise account of his homeward journey with his wife. Their son remained in Switzerland.

“After the declaration of war,” said Mr Franklin, “We sent a notification to the British Consul at Berne to the effect that we should like to return to England as soon as travelling was safe. We were advised to be as patient as possible, to wait as long as we could and to send particulars as to the destination, age and birthplace. In return we had passports forwarded to us and we were requested to form a committee and range ourselves in groups of five, if possible. A solicitor from Salisbury, who went to see the Consul, exchanged the whole of our return tickets for through tickets. Finally, it was arranged that we should leave Champery by early train, where a special trains would be awaiting us.”

“The additional time we spent in Switzerland was not disturbed by any alarming incidents, Provisions were plentiful and fruit was cheap. The only food that went up in price – as far as I could see – was potatoes. The hotel-keepers were anxious for us to stay in Switzerland and voluntarily reduced their charges by two francs per day.

900 Passengers from Montreux.

“We left Montreux at 9.30am on Tuesday morning, August 25th. All the passengers- over 900 in number - were counselled to take provisions for three days and this was a necessary precaution as all, we could get on the journey was coffee. Before we left Montreuz water was being sold at the rate of three bottles for a franc. After that supply was exhausted there was a rush to fill the bottles at the taps, the journey to Paris which occupied 31 hours instead of 11 or 12 hours.”

“On reaching Geneva we changed onto another train. An English gentleman with a megaphone instructed us to walk two abreast to the other station, the approach to which was lined by soldiers with fixed bayonets. We found place in a special train with numbered carriages and we were informed that a number of gentlemen would accompany us (by arrangement with the Consul) as far as Dieppe.


“At last the train was in motion and the first large town at which we halted was Lyons, where we had a splendid reception from the French troops, who cheered heartily. In response, we sang the Marseilles and the French people sang the National Anthem. When the train left there was renewed cheering and the French officers and men waved their caps to bid us farewell.

“Owing to the congestion of traffic on the main line we had to make a detour of about 200 miles. The next stopping place was Montargis, where we saw a number of French wounded from Mulhausen, including one poor man who was stated to have had both his hands cut off by the Germans after he was wounded. We also saw a German lady who had been arrested as a spy.

A German Spy Shot.

“A few miles south of Paris we ran into a station where there was great excitement; and on enquiry we found that a German spy, who had been loitering about for days had attempted to blow up a bridge. He was pursued by French soldiers, plunged into the Seine and was shot by a soldier.”

“On our arrival at Paris, we halted an hour, and were taken from one platform to the other. We saw a large number of French troops, including some from Savoy. The ladies gave the troops chocolates and the gentlemen gave them cigars, cigarettes and money.”

“It was remarkable to see the way in which the soldiers divided the gifts. The recipients instead of putting as many as they could into their won pockets distributed them among their own comrades.”

“There were thousands of people, including French troops, to see our train start. The National Anthem was sung and for a good mile out of Paris people were seen at the windows waving their hands and in some cases, the Union Jack. The passengers in their turn displayed the French and Belgian flags.

From Dieppe to Folkstone.

“The train did not pass through Rouen but proceeded to Dieppe by another route.”

“Leaving the train at Dieppe, we went to the quay and spent the night on the ‘Paris’ one of the fastest channel boats.”

“We reached Folkstone at 1pm on Thursday and proceeded to Charing Cross. Fortunately Mrs. Franklin and I caught a train to Eastbourne via Tunbridge Wells and 6pm.

“I should like to express the warmest thanks to the British Consul at Montreux and Berne, for their excellent arrangements for the return journey.”

Attila The Kaiser's Model

This great article appeared in the Kildare Observer in September 1914, giving the reader of the day an insight to The Kaiser's role model.

ATTILA THE KAISER'S MODEL

Those who imagine that the German Barbarities are the result of outbreaks of brutality on the part of the troops, and that they are not ordered by the highest authorities, would do well to remember that the Kaiser issued the following command to his troops on June 27th, 1900, an their departure for Pekin.

"When you come into contact with the enemy, strike him down. Quarter is not to be given. Prisoners are not to be made. Just, as a thousand years ago, the Huns, under their King Attila, made themselves a name which still appears imposing in tradition, so may the German name become known in China in such a way that never again will a Chinaman dare to look at a German."

A Story of the Kaiser

This is a gem of a story from The Eastbourne Gazette on 19th August 1914.

Apparently the Great War can be put down to an Eastbourne toy maker giving in to the spoilt demands of a young Kaiser. If only he had made the Kaiser wait perhaps he would have leant his lesson and not have been so intent on global domination!

I love all the stories that came out at the beginning of the war.


A Story of the Kaiser

Speaking at a meeting of Sunday school scholars and workers on Sunday afternoon at South Street Church. Mr. George Brown related an incident which ought to interest all Eastbournians at the present time.

Some years ago a young Prince (a cousin of the Kaiser) was spending some time at the Cavendish Hotel. Some friends in Eastbourne had presented the Prince with a beautiful toy yacht which he highly treasured. While the young Prince was staying there his cousin the Kaiser came over to stay a few weeks in Eastbourne. When he saw his cousin’s yacht he became jealous and wanted to fight him for it. This came to the ears of those who had presented it to the Prince, they decided for the sake of peace, to give the Kaiser a similar yacht made by the same man and they had arranged to make the presentation on a certain Monday afternoon. The young Kaiser heard all about it and insisted on his tutor taking him on the previous Sunday afternoon to see the new yacht. On arriving at the maker’s house, the tutor explained that the Kaiser gave them no peace; he was too impatient to wait until Monday afternoon and he must have the yacht at once. They gave it to him so there was no public presentation.

Mr. Brown pointed out the moral; that what was in the boy was also in him when he became a man. As a boy the Kaiser was jealous and impatient and would fight for toys that did not belong to him. He was manifesting the same spirit today.