This appeared in the correspondence section1 of _Fortean Times_ 464 (December 2025), relating a story told by the grandmother of the author, Robert Flood: > During the First World War her husband was serving in the Royal Naval Air Service and Nan was living with her parents in Temple Mill Lane, Stratford (her father worked at the GER Works at Stratford). Whenever the Aurora Borealis/Northern Lights were mentioned she always said that during this time there was an aurora display and that people thought it was Zeppelins dropping poison gas. I can see that the greenish colour might trigger the idea of chlorine. I would be interested to know if anyone knows anything about this. Now, you might think that I’d be such an anyone, given my very particular set of skills, but unfortunately I’m not. I’ve never come across this connection between Zeppelins, aurorae, and poison gas before; nor can I find any evidence of this in the wartime press. That definitely doesn’t mean this belief did not exist, though it perhaps puts a limit on how widespread it might have been. My guess is that if there was such a belief, it would most likely have dated to either 1915, when ill-considered official advice about how to prepare for chemical warfare on the home front led to a brief vogue for civilian gas masks, though I’ve never seen much evidence that anyone was very worried about this, or else 1917-18, when there were some genuine fears of the possibility, and even the actuality, of poison gas bombs being dropped on London and elsewhere. From my limited research into this question, the revival of fears in the latter period seems to have mainly concerned civil defence workers, though there was at least one case of a coronial inquiry which considered the possibility that a small child had been gassed by a bomb in the East End (and which concluded in the negative). In any case, those had more to do with aeroplane raids than airship ones, and nothing to do with aurorae. However, at least one Gotha (technically, Giant) raid was associated with an auroral display, that of 7 March 1918, which in fact was sometimes called the ‘Aurora Borealis Raid’ by some newspapers, such as the _Sphere_ (which marked the occasion with the artist’s impression shown above). This raid shows how an unusually striking aurora could readily be incorporated into the spectacle of aerial bombardment: > Last Thursday’s starlight-cum-Northern Lights raid was an unwelcome surprise to Londoners, who had begun to acquire a sensation of absolute safety so long as the moon was below the horizon. Whether the Aurora Borealis display actually took place or was merely a bit of official camouflage I am not in a position to say. Until this explanation came out the general opinion was that the lights came from a series of big fires to the north of London. One of those extraordinarily well-informed people who are always ready to give others the benefit of their vivid imaginations told me that they were a brand-new kind of pink light for guiding our aeroplanes home and added (a pretty touch!) that he had watched our planes gliding down between them!2 So I’m certainly not going to discount the possibility that British people saw the aurora borealis and thought it was poison gas! Image source: _Sphere_ , 16 March 1918, 229. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://airminded.org/copyright/. 1. Incidentally, the world’s best correspondence section. [↩] 2. _Bystander_ , 13 March 1918, 540. [↩] Share this: Related posts: * No total war but class total war * Is that war? * The pity of war * War games

Like many people – out of the sort of people who know these sorts of things, that is – I knew of Jan Smuts’ key role in the origins of both the RAF and the Air Ministry. It was the so-called ‘Smuts report’ to the War Cabinet, in August 1917, which set the whole process rolling and, after some twists and turns along the way, led to the formation of the Air Ministry in January 1918 and then the formation of the RAF the following April.1 This has always seemed slightly weird, because not only was Smuts an outsider, as the South African defence minister, but also a former enemy of the British Empire: he’d been a Boer commando officer during the South African War. But he was an astute, original thinker, and, just as importantly as far as Lloyd George was concerned, a clean pair of hands, who had not been sullied by involvement with the Western Front strategy. Thus, with the Gothas raiding London in June and July 1917, the press and parliament in uproar, and a political and military solution urgently required, Lloyd George turned to Smuts for help, appointing him to a committee consisting of the both of them.2 Now, I also knew that the Smuts report wasn’t the only, or even the first, report to come out of this committee. It was preceded in July by a more pressing inquiry into London’s defences. This report was also quite consequential, if not quite _as_ consequential, since it led directly to the formation in August of London Air Defence Area (LADA), which integrated fighters, anti-aircraft guns, searchlights, and observation posts into the one command, a successful arrangement which was reproduced in the interwar period and eventually evolved into Fighter Command. So that’s two really important appearances by Smuts in the origins of British airpower. Not bad for somebody who’d only been in the country for less than six months. What I _didn’t_ know until combing through the War Cabinet records for 1917, however, was just how much Smuts was called upon as an aviation troubleshooter. Almost every other meeting, it seemed, he was being appointed to chair yet another committee or solve another pressing problem relating to air raids or air policy or air production. Here’s a list of his aviation-related committees, with his role and date of authorisation: * 11 July 1917: member, Air Organisation and Home Defence against Air Raids Committee3 * 24 August 1917: chair, Air Organisation Committee * 23 September 1917: chair, Aerial Operations Committee (War Priorities Committee from 8 October 1917) * 1 October 1917: chair, Air Raids Committee * 15 October 1917: chair, Air Policy Committee Just what all distinguished all these very similar-sounding committees from each other is not entirely clear now, and probably wasn’t either then. But a few things can be said, even without drilling into their papers. The Air Organisation Committee was devoted to laying the groundwork for the unification of the RFC and RNAS into the RAF, including preparing the legislation required for setting up a whole new service. The Aerial Operations Committee was tasked with adjudicating the air production needs between the Army and the Navy (later expanding into all munitions). The Air Raids Committee was initially set up to look into anti-aircraft guns and ammunition for London, but almost instantly was given the question of bombing Germany. And the Air Policy Committee’s remit was to advise the War Cabinet on _all_ air policy questions. Nor was this all, because Smuts was also detailed by the War Cabinet for several other one-off reports or investigations on air matters: * 14 August 1917: investigate carrying out reprisal raids in conjunction with the French * 5 September 1917: investigate previous two nights’ raids, along with the questions of air raid shelters and reprisal raids * 30 November 1917: sent to Coventry to speak to striking aircraft factory workers * 6 December 1917: prepare public statement on previous night’s raid Even well into 1918, Smuts ‘continued to deal with air matters’ on behalf of the War Cabinet, according to Peter Dye.4 This is starting to sound obsessive!5 Surely the whole point of having an air minister at all was to ‘deal with air matters’? Part of the issue here was probably that the actual air minister, since November 1917, was Lord Rothermere, whose time in the post was marked by chaos, conflict and confusion (and that’s just inside the Air Ministry). So it might well have been useful to be able to get a second opinion on what was still a very new political and military arena. But then again, why not just go ahead and make Smuts the actual air minister in the first place, or even the second?6 As far as I know, he wasn’t considered for the role. Perhaps there was some constitutional issue or perhaps he was just too valuable as a political pinch-hitter (he was also vice-chair of the high-level War Policy Committee, for example). Still, I reckon Smuts’ deep involvement in so many aspects of air policy in this crucial year is enough to warrant considering him the first, or rather the zeroth, air minister. Image source: National Army Museum. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://airminded.org/copyright/. 1. The best account of this is in Christopher Luck, ‘The Smuts Report: interpreting and misinterpreting the promise of air power’, in _Changing War: The British Army, the Hundred Days Campaign and The Birth of the Royal Air Force, 1918_ , ed. Gary Sheffield and Peter Gray (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 149–170. [↩] 2. Lloyd George was nominally the chair of the committee, but did not actually take part in its work, hence Smuts gets the credit. [↩] 3. Or Committee on Air Organisation and Home Defence against Air Raids Committee, Prime Minister’s Committee on Air Organisation and Home Defence against Air Raids Committee, etc. [↩] 4. Peter Dye, _The Birth of British Airpower: Hugh Trenchard, World War I, and the Royal Air Force_ (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2024), 153. [↩] 5. I did consider calling this post ‘Smuts, Smuts, Smuts, that’s all these ministers think about!’ [↩] 6. Though Rothermere’s replacement, Sir William Weir, turned out okay. [↩] Share this: Related posts: * Zeroth World Wars * Ban the Air Bomb! * The air strategist as business guru * The greatest air service in the world

Like many people – out of the sort of people who know these sorts of things, that is – I knew of Jan Smuts’ key role in the origins of both the RAF and the Air Ministry. It was the so-called ‘Smuts report’ to the War Cabinet, in August 1917, which set the whole process rolling and, after some twists and turns along the way, led to the formation of the Air Ministry in January 1918 and then the formation of the RAF the following April.1 This has always seemed slightly weird, because not only was Smuts an outsider, as the South African defence minister, but also a former enemy of the British Empire: he’d been a Boer commando officer during the South African War. But he was an astute, original thinker, and, just as importantly as far as Lloyd George was concerned, a clean pair of hands, who had not been sullied by involvement with the Western Front strategy. Thus, with the Gothas raiding London in June and July 1917, the press and parliament in uproar, and a political and military solution urgently required, Lloyd George turned to Smuts for help, appointing him to a committee consisting of the both of them.2 Now, I also knew that the Smuts report wasn’t the only, or even the first, report to come out of this committee. It was preceded in July by a more pressing inquiry into London’s defences. This report was also quite consequential, if not quite _as_ consequential, since it led directly to the formation in August of London Air Defence Area (LADA), which integrated fighters, anti-aircraft guns, searchlights, and observation posts into the one command, a successful arrangement which was reproduced in the interwar period and eventually evolved into Fighter Command. So that’s two really important appearances by Smuts in the origins of British airpower. Not bad for somebody who’d only been in the country for less than six months. What I _didn’t_ know until combing through the War Cabinet records for 1917, however, was just how much Smuts was called upon as an aviation troubleshooter. Almost every other meeting, it seemed, he was being appointed to chair yet another committee or solve another pressing problem relating to air raids or air policy or air production. Here’s a list of his aviation-related committees, with his role and date of authorisation: * 11 July 1917: member, Air Organisation and Home Defence against Air Raids Committee3 * 24 August 1917: chair, Air Organisation Committee * 23 September 1917: chair, Aerial Operations Committee (War Priorities Committee from 8 October 1917) * 1 October 1917: chair, Air Raids Committee * 15 October 1917: chair, Air Policy Committee Just what all distinguished all these very similar-sounding committees from each other is not entirely clear now, and probably wasn’t either then. But a few things can be said, even without drilling into their papers. The Air Organisation Committee was devoted to laying the groundwork for the unification of the RFC and RNAS into the RAF, including preparing the legislation required for setting up a whole new service. The Aerial Operations Committee was tasked with adjudicating the air production needs between the Army and the Navy (later expanding into all munitions). The Air Raids Committee was initially set up to look into anti-aircraft guns and ammunition for London, but almost instantly was given the question of bombing Germany. And the Air Policy Committee’s remit was to advise the War Cabinet on _all_ air policy questions. Nor was this all, because Smuts was also detailed by the War Cabinet for several other one-off reports or investigations on air matters: * 14 August 1917: investigate carrying out reprisal raids in conjunction with the French * 5 September 1917: investigate previous two nights’ raids, along with the questions of air raid shelters and reprisal raids * 30 November 1917: sent to Coventry to speak to striking aircraft factory workers * 6 December 1917: prepare public statement on previous night’s raid Even well into 1918, Smuts ‘continued to deal with air matters’ on behalf of the War Cabinet, according to Peter Dye.4 This is starting to sound obsessive!5 Surely the whole point of having an air minister at all was to ‘deal with air matters’? Part of the issue here was probably that the actual air minister, since November 1917, was Lord Rothermere, whose time in the post was marked by chaos, conflict and confusion (and that’s just inside the Air Ministry). So it might well have been useful to be able to get a second opinion on what was still a very new political and military arena. But then again, why not just go ahead and make Smuts the actual air minister in the first place, or even the second?6 As far as I know, he wasn’t considered for the role. Perhaps there was some constitutional issue or perhaps he was just too valuable as a political pinch-hitter (he was also vice-chair of the high-level War Policy Committee, for example). Still, I reckon Smuts’ deep involvement in so many aspects of air policy in this crucial year is enough to warrant considering him the first, or rather the zeroth, air minister. Image source: National Army Museum. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://airminded.org/copyright/. 1. The best account of this is in Christopher Luck, ‘The Smuts Report: interpreting and misinterpreting the promise of air power’, in _Changing War: The British Army, the Hundred Days Campaign and The Birth of the Royal Air Force, 1918_ , ed. Gary Sheffield and Peter Gray (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 149–170. [↩] 2. Lloyd George was nominally the chair of the committee, but did not actually take part in its work, hence Smuts gets the credit. [↩] 3. Or Committee on Air Organisation and Home Defence against Air Raids Committee, Prime Minister’s Committee on Air Organisation and Home Defence against Air Raids Committee, etc. [↩] 4. Peter Dye, _The Birth of British Airpower: Hugh Trenchard, World War I, and the Royal Air Force_ (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2024), 153. [↩] 5. I did consider calling this post ‘Smuts, Smuts, Smuts, that’s all these ministers think about!’ [↩] 6. Though Rothermere’s replacement, Sir William Weir, turned out okay. [↩] Share this: Related posts: * Zeroth World Wars * Ban the Air Bomb! * The air strategist as business guru * The greatest air service in the world

Somehow I managed to miss – by exactly a year! – the publication of the third and final volume of Ian Castle’s history of the Zeppelin and Gotha raids: * Ian Castle, _Zeppelin Onslaught: The Forgotten Blitz 1914–1915_ (Barnsley: Frontline, 2018). * Ian Castle, _Zeppelin Inferno: The Forgotten Blitz 1916_ (Philadelphia: Frontline, 2022). * Ian Castle, _Gotha Terror: The Forgotten Blitz 1917–1918_ (Philadelphia: Frontline, 2024). I included _Zeppelin Onslaught_ on my 1914–1918 air raids reading list back in 2022. In the meantime I’ve read _Zeppelin Inferno_ , and having just finished _Gotha Terror_ I can now say that the Forgotten Blitz trilogy is now the gold-standard narrative of the German air raids on Britain in the First World War, especially in terms of the damage suffered on the ground. Indeed, thanks to Ian’s meticulous research in the National Archives and the press (especially coroner’s inquests), for the first time we have a near-complete list of the individuals killed in all the raids: 1285 out of the official total of 1414 dead, or nearly 91 percent. In itself this is a huge achievement. There is also a solid account of the operational side of the raids, both British and German. As somebody is also (but at a much slower rate!) writing about these raids, I’m extremely grateful to have these books. Although it’s structured chronologically, my book is not a narrative, or not a comprehensive one anyway; I’m focusing much more on how people, communities and governments responded to the raids, than on the details of the raids themselves. But those details matter, and that’s why it’s great to have such a reliable and well-researched guide to hand when I need it (which is often). Congratulations, Ian! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://airminded.org/copyright/. Share this: Related posts: * Tintagel Castle * Caerleon and Caerphilly Castle * The Blitz on the web * A myth of the Blitz?

Four days after the second great daylight Gotha raid on London, Lady Louise Maxwell (above) wrote a letter announcing the foundation of a new philanthropic fund, the Home Fires Fund. Believing that it was ‘childish to expect a huge city like London […] can escape these occasional air raids’, and accepting that ‘We have come within the “War Zone” that is all, and must accept the risks of war as philosophically as we can’, she nevertheless pointed to ‘one class who cannot be expected to appreciate this point of view, and that is those unfortunate people in the East End whose homes have been destroyed by enemy bombs and who have lost their little all in the wreckage’: > If we in the West End feel a pang when we contemplate the possible destruction of our homes and all our beloved household gods, we know that, at anyrate [sic] if they are destroyed, we can more or less replace them; but think what it must mean to the poor, to whom their houses and their much-prized goods and chattels represent the savings of a lifetime, who know that once destroyed they have no means of recreating a home!!1 The Home Fires Fund, Lady Maxwell declared, would ‘help rebuild these wrecked homes’, though without providing any details at this stage of how this would actually be achieved.2 Like many women of her standing, Lady Maxwell was a serial philanthropist and knew how to organise a charity; the Home Fires Fund boasted an impressive array of supporters from the ranks of the great and the good: royals (H.M. Queen Mary as patroness, H.R.H. the Duchess of Argyll as president), nobles (the Duchesses of Abercorn (Dowager), Buckingham, and Marlborough, the Marchionesses of Londonderry (Dowager) and Salisbury), senior politicians or their relations (Austen Chamberlain, Edwin Montagu, Margaret Lloyd George, Miss Isobel Bonar Law), and soldiers (Viscount French, Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces), etc, etc. It no doubt helped that Lady Maxwell’s husband was Lieutenant-General Sir John Maxwell, Commander-in-Chief, Northern Command; she herself was the daughter of an Irish-American who made his fortune in mining. Lady Maxwell was clearly comfortable in her (acquired) class and, perhaps with the help of some American brashness, seems to have been well-accustomed to giving directions. But despite all these good intentions and despite all this support, the Home Fires Fund never, as far as I can tell, came into existence.3 The reason for this is actually easily answered. Writing on behalf of the Government Committee on the Prevention and Relief of Distress, A.V. Symonds (assistant secretary to the Local Government Board) sent Lady Maxwell ‘copies of various memoranda &c. showing what we can do for the alleviation of distress caused by Enemy Air Raids’ and noting that it had been ‘reported’ that the Prime Minister had ‘accepted the principle of Government compensation for damage to property’. He therefore concluded that ‘in view of the provision already made there was really no case for a further Fund’.4 In reply, Lady Maxwell agreed to hold the Home Fires Fund in abeyance, pending a promised letter from Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the Conservatives. However, she still wondered – after speaking to the Duchess of Argyll – whether since, as the proposed government relief was limited to £20, whether ‘we might assist beyond that amount’.5 And, indeed, when the promised letter from Bonar Law never arrived Lady Maxwell eventually reopened the matter on this basis, arguing that her fund ‘will not in any way clash with the government [work?], as you will restore only the essentials and we propose to recreate the Homes‘.6 Symonds, however, held the line: ‘I still do not think that there is a case for another fund’.7 In between the formalities, there are hints here that the correspondents were actually getting a bit fed up with each other. I think a round of correspondence is missing between the last two I’ve cited here, as Symonds rebuts various charges not in the extent letters, in shockingly direct language for a civil servant writing to a member of the public: > There are just one or two points in it which I think ought to be cleared up… > If you will let me say so… > There most certainly has been no delay… > I hope you won’t misunderstand me.7 Indeed, so hot was Symonds’ blood at this point that he was forced to protest that ‘Although I am a Government Official, I am really alive to the value of human sympathy’!7 For her part, Lady Maxwell acceded to Symonds’ position this time with ill-concealed irritation, opening with a terse ‘Thanks for your letter’ (whereas previously she had been all ‘Thank you so much for your kind letter & all the particulars you so kindly sent me’).8 She further intimated that she was ‘sorry you do not yet approve of my scheme or our “Home Fires Fund” to assist in the East End!’, adding that while she proposed ‘to do nothing for the present […] everything is in order to bring it out in a moment if it is needed’.9 In her irritable desire to drive her point home to the obstinate Symonds, however, Lady Maxwell did make a further, revealing argument: > [You?] will forgive me [for?] saying, I am well acquainted with the [limitations?] of government action, & if (as I am assured) prompt assistance is not given to these people in the East End, **& they do sally forth & begin breaking our windows & looting our houses**, then I will be able to put my idea into practical action [at?] once, & see if a [?] human sympathy cannot be of more assistance than [?] & dry government dole.10 It seems to me that, despite her expressed sympathies at the outset for the working classes in their small houses, it was in fact the protection of her own much grander home – her London residence was in posh Belgravia, across the road from Hyde Park Corner and Buckingham Palace Gardens – and those of the upper ten thousand that was Lady Maxwell’s primary motivation. In her previous letter to Symonds, she had written > I cannot but think that in these Revolutionary [sic] days, anything that tends to promote good feeling & friendship between the upper & lower classes must be of use, & my Fund is really meant to [give?] us [the?] right to offer our friendship & prove our sympathy with the sufferers from this brutal form of barbarity, more than it is to collect money […]6 Of course, she was right: these _were_ revolutionary times. September 1917 was about fifteen months after the Easter Rising in Dublin (which, incidentally, her husband, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, had brutally repressed), six months since the February Revolution in Russia, just three months since the French army mutinies (not public knowledge, but she may well have known of them through her husband). And to be fair to Lady Maxwell, at the outset she had also offered a strategic rationale for relieving air-raid distress in the midst of a total war: > Think what the men at the front must feel whose houses are in ruins and their wives and children homeless, while they are fighting for their country over there. If we cannot protect their families, at least let us help them to keep their home fires burning until they return […] let all those who have not yet suffered from the Hun invasion help to recreate the ‘Homes’ that our soldiers dream of in the trenches!! The Germans may think that by destroying the houses of the poor, they can rouse up a feeling of animosity and bitterness between the East End and the West, a feeling of resentment that we should be spared while they have to suffer, but let us show the Huns that in this time of war, when all class distinctions have been levelled and we stand just as plain men and women before the guns – whether in England or in France – the spirit of true sympathy and brotherhood between rich and poor is too strong for even German bombs to destroy.11 Lady Maxwell wanted to head off class war in order to win the total war. Or less kindly, to ensure that the working class stayed in its place, while the total war was being won. Luckily for her and her class, the East End never did sally forth; and Symonds’ form of cool, unsympathetic government action proved to be up to the tasking of keeping the working classes quiescent during the heaviest period of bombing at the end of September and the start of October. Well, mostly – but that’s a qualification for another day. Image source: _The Tatler_ , 16 January 1918, 79. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://airminded.org/copyright/. 1. The National Archives [TNA]: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louse Maxwell, 11 July 1917; emphasis in original. [↩] 2. Ibid. [↩] 3. There’s no mention of it in BNA under that name; searching for the constellation of names on the committee turns up nothing air raid related, either. [↩] 4. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, A.V. Symonds, 17 July 1917. [↩] 5. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louise Maxwell, 19 July 1917. [↩] 6. TNA, MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louise Maxwell, 8 September 1917; emphasis in original. [↩] [↩] 7. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, A.V. Symonds, 29 September 1917. [↩] [↩] [↩] 8. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louise Maxwell, 30 September 1917; TNA: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louise Maxwell, 19 July 1917. [↩] 9. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louise Maxwell, 30 September 1917; emphasis in original. [↩] 10. Ibid; my emphasis. [↩] 11. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Maxwell, 11 July 1917. [↩] Share this: Related posts: * Total war and total peace * But I only just started! * But that happened in France * Trust but verify

Four days after the second great daylight Gotha raid on London, Lady Louise Maxwell (above) wrote a letter announcing the foundation of a new philanthropic fund, the Home Fires Fund. Believing that it was ‘childish to expect a huge city like London […] can escape these occasional air raids’, and accepting that ‘We have come within the “War Zone” that is all, and must accept the risks of war as philosophically as we can’, she nevertheless pointed to ‘one class who cannot be expected to appreciate this point of view, and that is those unfortunate people in the East End whose homes have been destroyed by enemy bombs and who have lost their little all in the wreckage’: > If we in the West End feel a pang when we contemplate the possible destruction of our homes and all our beloved household gods, we know that, at anyrate [sic] if they are destroyed, we can more or less replace them; but think what it must mean to the poor, to whom their houses and their much-prized goods and chattels represent the savings of a lifetime, who know that once destroyed they have no means of recreating a home!!1 The Home Fires Fund, Lady Maxwell declared, would ‘help rebuild these wrecked homes’, though without providing any details at this stage of how this would actually be achieved.2 Like many women of her standing, Lady Maxwell was a serial philanthropist and knew how to organise a charity; the Home Fires Fund boasted an impressive array of supporters from the ranks of the great and the good: royals (H.M. Queen Mary as patroness, H.R.H. the Duchess of Argyll as president), nobles (the Duchesses of Abercorn (Dowager), Buckingham, and Marlborough, the Marchionesses of Londonderry (Dowager) and Salisbury), senior politicians or their relations (Austen Chamberlain, Edwin Montagu, Margaret Lloyd George, Miss Isobel Bonar Law), and soldiers (Viscount French, Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces), etc, etc. It no doubt helped that Lady Maxwell’s husband was Lieutenant-General Sir John Maxwell, Commander-in-Chief, Northern Command; she herself was the daughter of an Irish-American who made his fortune in mining. Lady Maxwell was clearly comfortable in her (acquired) class and, perhaps with the help of some American brashness, seems to have been well-accustomed to giving directions. But despite all these good intentions and despite all this support, the Home Fires Fund never, as far as I can tell, came into existence.3 The reason for this is actually easily answered. Writing on behalf of the Government Committee on the Prevention and Relief of Distress, A.V. Symonds (assistant secretary to the Local Government Board) sent Lady Maxwell ‘copies of various memoranda &c. showing what we can do for the alleviation of distress caused by Enemy Air Raids’ and noting that it had been ‘reported’ that the Prime Minister had ‘accepted the principle of Government compensation for damage to property’. He therefore concluded that ‘in view of the provision already made there was really no case for a further Fund’.4 In reply, Lady Maxwell agreed to hold the Home Fires Fund in abeyance, pending a promised letter from Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the Conservatives. However, she still wondered – after speaking to the Duchess of Argyll – whether since, as the proposed government relief was limited to £20, whether ‘we might assist beyond that amount’.5 And, indeed, when the promised letter from Bonar Law never arrived Lady Maxwell eventually reopened the matter on this basis, arguing that her fund ‘will not in any way clash with the government [work?], as you will restore only the essentials and we propose to recreate the Homes‘.6 Symonds, however, held the line: ‘I still do not think that there is a case for another fund’.7 In between the formalities, there are hints here that the correspondents were actually getting a bit fed up with each other. I think a round of correspondence is missing between the last two I’ve cited here, as Symonds rebuts various charges not in the extent letters, in shockingly direct language for a civil servant writing to a member of the public: > There are just one or two points in it which I think ought to be cleared up… > If you will let me say so… > There most certainly has been no delay… > I hope you won’t misunderstand me.7 Indeed, so hot was Symonds’ blood at this point that he was forced to protest that ‘Although I am a Government Official, I am really alive to the value of human sympathy’!7 For her part, Lady Maxwell acceded to Symonds’ position this time with ill-concealed irritation, opening with a terse ‘Thanks for your letter’ (whereas previously she had been all ‘Thank you so much for your kind letter & all the particulars you so kindly sent me’).8 She further intimated that she was ‘sorry you do not yet approve of my scheme or our “Home Fires Fund” to assist in the East End!’, adding that while she proposed ‘to do nothing for the present […] everything is in order to bring it out in a moment if it is needed’.9 In her irritable desire to drive her point home to the obstinate Symonds, however, Lady Maxwell did make a further, revealing argument: > [You?] will forgive me [for?] saying, I am well acquainted with the [limitations?] of government action, & if (as I am assured) prompt assistance is not given to these people in the East End, **& they do sally forth & begin breaking our windows & looting our houses**, then I will be able to put my idea into practical action [at?] once, & see if a [?] human sympathy cannot be of more assistance than [?] & dry government dole.10 It seems to me that, despite her expressed sympathies at the outset for the working classes in their small houses, it was in fact the protection of her own much grander home – her London residence was in posh Belgravia, across the road from Hyde Park Corner and Buckingham Palace Gardens – and those of the upper ten thousand that was Lady Maxwell’s primary motivation. In her previous letter to Symonds, she had written > I cannot but think that in these Revolutionary [sic] days, anything that tends to promote good feeling & friendship between the upper & lower classes must be of use, & my Fund is really meant to [give?] us [the?] right to offer our friendship & prove our sympathy with the sufferers from this brutal form of barbarity, more than it is to collect money […]6 Of course, she was right: these _were_ revolutionary times. September 1917 was about fifteen months after the Easter Rising in Dublin (which, incidentally, her husband, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, had brutally repressed), six months since the February Revolution in Russia, just three months since the French army mutinies (not public knowledge, but she may well have known of them through her husband). And to be fair to Lady Maxwell, at the outset she had also offered a strategic rationale for relieving air-raid distress in the midst of a total war: > Think what the men at the front must feel whose houses are in ruins and their wives and children homeless, while they are fighting for their country over there. If we cannot protect their families, at least let us help them to keep their home fires burning until they return […] let all those who have not yet suffered from the Hun invasion help to recreate the ‘Homes’ that our soldiers dream of in the trenches!! The Germans may think that by destroying the houses of the poor, they can rouse up a feeling of animosity and bitterness between the East End and the West, a feeling of resentment that we should be spared while they have to suffer, but let us show the Huns that in this time of war, when all class distinctions have been levelled and we stand just as plain men and women before the guns – whether in England or in France – the spirit of true sympathy and brotherhood between rich and poor is too strong for even German bombs to destroy.11 Lady Maxwell wanted to head off class war in order to win the total war. Or less kindly, to ensure that the working class stayed in its place, while the total war was being won. Luckily for her and her class, the East End never did sally forth; and Symonds’ form of cool, unsympathetic government action proved to be up to the tasking of keeping the working classes quiescent during the heaviest period of bombing at the end of September and the start of October. Well, mostly – but that’s a qualification for another day. Image source: _The Tatler_ , 16 January 1918, 79. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://airminded.org/copyright/. 1. The National Archives [TNA]: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louse Maxwell, 11 July 1917; emphasis in original. [↩] 2. Ibid. [↩] 3. There’s no mention of it in BNA under that name; searching for the constellation of names on the committee turns up nothing air raid related, either. [↩] 4. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, A.V. Symonds, 17 July 1917. [↩] 5. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louise Maxwell, 19 July 1917. [↩] 6. TNA, MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louise Maxwell, 8 September 1917; emphasis in original. [↩] [↩] 7. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, A.V. Symonds, 29 September 1917. [↩] [↩] [↩] 8. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louise Maxwell, 30 September 1917; TNA: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louise Maxwell, 19 July 1917. [↩] 9. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Louise Maxwell, 30 September 1917; emphasis in original. [↩] 10. Ibid; my emphasis. [↩] 11. TNA: MH 57/186, letter, Lady Maxwell, 11 July 1917. [↩] Share this: Related posts: * Total war and total peace * But I only just started! * But that happened in France * Trust but verify