To End All Wars_ A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 - Adam Hochschild [159]
Word came from the suburban palace where they were under house arrest that the Tsar and Tsarina would like to meet the famous visiting women's suffrage leader. The message was surprising, for the imperial couple had never been known as fans of suffrage for anyone, male or female. Pankhurst had to decline, since Britain was anxious for her not to hold any meetings that might unnecessarily antagonize the Provisional Government.
The summer of 1917 was a chaotic one. Russian troops were killing their officers or replacing them with soldiers' soviets, and by the hundreds of thousands they kept on leaving the front; history had never before seen an army dissolve on such a scale. There were more strikes and stormy meetings as the Provisional Government tried to corral the Bolsheviks and other radical sects into continuing the war. Pankhurst ignored suggestions that she and Jessie Kenney wear less stylish clothes, so as not to attract attention as members of the bourgeoisie, and also turned down an offer of bodyguards from a group of sympathetic army officers. From her hotel window in Petrograd she watched radical soldiers on parade, shouting "Down with capitalism!" and "Stop the war!" After Bolsheviks barged into the hotel itself and arrested 40 officers, she yielded to advice that it was best to leave for England, and quickly. By then it was obvious: a Bolshevik takeover was on the way.
And that was exactly what her daughter Sylvia fervently hoped for. She changed her newspaper's name from Woman's Dreadnought to Workers' Dreadnought as she awaited the class war that would end the war of nations. Testing the limits of censorship, she openly began to urge British troops to lay down their weapons, and published critical letters from soldiers at the front. In midsummer, while her mother was still in Russia, Sylvia scored an editorial coup. Her newspaper was the first to publish a statement unlike any the war had yet seen—an eloquent avowal from a front-line officer, and a highly decorated one at that, declaring his intention to stop fighting:
I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, upon which I entered as a War of defence, has now become a War of aggression and conquest.
The letter writer, Second Lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon, had just published a much-praised book of war poems. Nicknamed Mad Jack, he had been awarded the Military Cross in France for carrying a wounded soldier to safety under heavy fire. Later, he was recommended for the Victoria Cross, though he did not receive it, for single-handedly capturing a German trench. Not only did Sassoon have impeccable military credentials, but he came from an eminent family: his cousin Sir Philip Sassoon, a baronet and a member of Parliament, was Haig's private secretary.
Sent back to England after being shot through the throat, and convalescing in a London hospital, he read a volume of Bertrand Russell's collected writings against the war, Justice in Wartime, and was inspired to act. Russell, whom he met, encouraged him to speak out, helped him draft his statement, and passed it on to a sympathetic ME Two days after Sylvia Pankhurst published it, Sassoon's letter of defiance was read aloud in the House of Commons. Basil Thomson's agents raided the offices of both the Workers' Dreadnought and the No-Conscription Fellowship, where they seized 100 copies of the letter. Sassoon expected that he would be sent before a court-martial, where he could denounce the war in a forum that would gain wide attention. For peace activists, this promised an unparalleled opportunity to reach the public: a high-profile trial of a decorated officer who had seen his men die.
Surprisingly, in between haranguing antiwar crowds