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By Root 1166 0

ordered all Women's Social and Political Union activity to halt. The British government, meanwhile, unconditionally freed all imprisoned suffragettes. (The amnesty was greeted with relief at Scotland Yard's Special Branch, where it released many of Basil Thomson's agents for new duties, including the 12 who earned a bonus of three shillings a week for knowing shorthand. They had often been kept busy recording suffragette rallies.) Although the next issue of the WSPU's fiery newspaper, the Suffragette, had already been printed, Emmeline and Christabel canceled its distribution and embarked for home. As the ferry took them across the Channel to England, tens of thousands of John French's soldiers were on troop transports steaming in the other direction. Emmeline was heading toward a battle of her own—with her daughter Sylvia.

Just before the war began, Emmeline and Christabel had pushed Sylvia out of the WSPU. But the rift was about to deepen. True to her socialist convictions, Sylvia passionately opposed British participation in the war. A public clash with her mother and sister seemed inevitable.

Voices like Sylvia's were few. Even Charlotte Despard, who had spoken against "this criminal war" to a rally of more than 2,000 women on the night Britain declared hostilities, fell uncharacteristically silent; it was hard to oppose the war when her beloved younger brother was now commander in chief at the front. Keir Hardie, who continued to call the war a catastrophe, found himself jeered on the street in London. A fellow MP came upon him sitting on the terrace of the House of Commons, gazing despairingly at the Thames. Although he roamed the country speaking his mind, one comrade described him as "crumpled in body and broken in spirit." In the euphoria of mobilization, press coverage of his speeches was scanty, and few people seemed to notice when his Independent Labour Party issued a defiant proclamation: "Across the roar of guns, we send sympathy and greeting to the German Socialists.... They are no enemies of ours, but faithful friends."

Hardie faced a dilemma common to peace activists then and now: how do you oppose a war without seeming to undermine the husbands, fathers, and brothers of your fellow citizens whose lives are in danger? Occasionally he equivocated, at one point speaking of pushing German troops back across their borders. His heart went out to the families who soon started receiving tragic news from France, sometimes those who were his political enemies. After the only son of a wealthy, stridently chauvinist Conservative MP was killed at the front, Hardie wrote to a friend that he wanted "to go up to him and put my arms around his neck."

For a country that, until almost the last minute, had looked as if it might not join the conflict, the transformation was stunning. Military recruiters were warmly welcomed everywhere, as streets were cordoned off so that men waiting to enlist could practice bayoneting dummies. Newly enlisted soldiers marched off to railway stations singing. On August 1 only eight men had signed up at the army's principal recruiting office in London. Three days later, the crowd trying to get in was so large that 20 policemen were needed to force a path for the officer on duty to reach his post. Three days after that, to accommodate all applicants, the Edinburgh recruiting office had to remain open all night.

In London alone, 100 new recruits were sworn in every hour. Some two dozen plays on patriotic themes, with titles like Call to Arms, were rushed into West End theaters, and during intermissions recruiters signed up men from the audience. At Knavesmire, Yorkshire, delighted spectators filled the stands at a racecourse to watch squadrons of the Royal Scots Greys practice the cavalry charges they planned to use against German troops in France. Everywhere, recruiters found that one thing above all was certain to draw a torrent of eager men: music from a military band. Some units were so flooded with would-be recruits that they began charging an entrance fee; others had to drill with umbrellas