Following Britain’s entry into the First World War, the foreign spy became a particularly poignant image in popular culture as well as broader political discourse. Although espionage had featured regularly across British society during the preceding decade, with the outbreak of war the depiction of the spy took on a new significance. This thesis analyses British fears of German espionage between August 1914 and December 1915, in order to assess how popular spy phobias shaped wartime experiences. This recrudescence of spy fever, as these fears are commonly known, was facilitated by national policies and encouraged by local authorities. Pre-war strategic planning had determined that agents of the Kaiser were likely to target vulnerable infrastructure essential to Britain’s mobilisation. With this in mind, authorities responded to the declaration of war by conducting an erratic search for potential spies within their respective communities. These ostensibly official measures combined with scaremongering in the press to establish the danger of foreign espionage. Early rhetoric defined the appropriate response; popular suspicion and enhanced vigilance became essential to the national war effort. Defence panics had been an intermittent feature of Victorian and Edwardian discourse, and spy scares reflected a continuation of this tradition. Fears of espionage were far more prolific as collective anxieties rather than individual qualms. While some elements of society were caught up in this spy fever, others appeared unaffected by such concerns. As this thesis will show, emotional responses to spies appeared most pervasive in staunchly conservative communities that believed liberalism was ill-equipped to deal with national security and imperial defence. As a result, liberal ideals created a conflicting set of emotions that opposed radicalism and the feelings that it promoted. Spy fever was thus not a ubiquitous panic, nor was it particularly irrational, despite the fallacy of the espionage threat. Although anti-alienism has often been identified as the cause of such trepidation, spy phobias were multifaceted, and individuals who developed such fears did so for a variety of reasons.

This thesis charts the military education of junior Edwardian army officers, moving chronologically through key aspects of the process. It examines the detail of curricula at Sandhurst and Woolwich, the prevalence of entry via auxiliary forces and the military knowledge of men who gained commissions by that route, the training and study officers undertook after commissioning, and the education available at Camberley and Quetta. It thus offers a holistic examination of officer education. It concludes that there was a strong and growing professionalism among the junior commissioned officers, founded on their acquisition of skilled expertise and their expectations of advancing in their careers on the basis of professional merit. This thesis contributes to broader debates in three ways. Firstly, by going beyond existing studies which focus heavily on the upper echelons of the officer corps, it allows a more complete examination of the competence and military capacity of the Edwardian army. Secondly, it contributes to discussions on professionalism and processes of professionalization at the beginning of the twentieth century. Thirdly, it considers the nature of the training and education that the Edwardian Army undertook and seeks to locate this within discussions on the proper form and objectives of officer education.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the 51st (Highland) division over the course of the First World War. Underpinning the study is an analysis of both change and continuity, at home and overseas, and the performance of the division as a fighting unit. The key themes identified for study have been training, esprit de corps, recruitment and reinforcement, and battle performance. Through the investigation of the key themes, other important characteristics have been analysed, such as command and control, organisation, and the level of centralisation in both the formation and in the wider Army. Key questions in the research apply to both divisional study and to wider academic understanding of the First World War. The thesis considers a number of themes that have been neglected by historians old and new, and brings into sharp focus some areas of research that may have produced inaccurate assumptions. In addition, a substantial range and quantity of primary sources have been utilised, many unexplored until now. The selection of the 51st (Highland) Division for study was based on a number of criteria. (Highland) Division experiences were both unique and not unique. In some areas it was a very individual formation, but in other areas or at particular times of the war it was not.

Treatment and advice on amoebic dysentery from case studies onboard H.M.H.S. Lanfranc, May 1916.

The development of the British air weapon on the Western Front during the First World War represented a revolution in the way that national resources were employed in exploiting a technological opportunity to achieve tactical and operational advantage. Logistic competence was the precondition for air superiority and the 'modern style of warfare' — indirect, predicted artillery fire. The Royal Flying Corps' logistic staffs, led by Brigadier-General Robert Brooke-Popham, demonstrated considerable agility in meeting the demands of three-dimensional warfare. Sustaining adequate numbers of front-line aircraft required substantial numbers of skilled and semi-skilled personnel, located largely beyond the battle zone, operating at a continuously high tempo while coping with rapid technological change and high wastage. These elements formed a complex, dynamic and integrated network that was also partly self-sustaining, in the form of salvage and repair, with the ability to compensate for shortfalls in aircraft and aero-engine production as well as unpredictable demand. The logistic principles developed on the Western Front provided the foundation for Royal Air Force success in the Second World War and anticipated the management practices that underpin today's global supply chain - as well as demonstrating the enduring interdependence of logistics and air power.

The thesis addresses the question, ‘How did the First World War affect the religious faith of the people of Britain?’ The ways in which wartime preachers, hymn-writers, diarists and letter-writers expressed their faith are examined. For the vast majority, the War was both a military and a spiritual conflict of right against might and the rhetoric of a Holy War was popular. Questions of divine omnipotence and providence troubled many, the standard response being that war was a consequence of God’s gift of free will. The language of sacrifice dominated public discourse, with many asserting that the salvation of the fallen was ensured by their own sacrifice. Prayers for the dead became widely accepted in the Church of England. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy promoted the belief that God shares in human suffering. However, there is little evidence that his advocacy of divine impassibility was influential subsequently. Wartime ecumenical activities and attitudes are analysed, the hopes for Christian unity of the 1920 Lambeth Conference are discussed and the naïve optimism of many bishops is contrasted with the reality of ecclesiological differences. The conclusion is that the War’s influence on people’s faith was limited and reasons for this are suggested.

The British army officer commissioned from the ranks had become a rare and politically contested phenomenon in the years leading up to the First World War. This research addresses a previously unexamined phenomenon; how the conflict saw almost 10,000 commissions awarded to soldiers from the ranks of the pre-war British Army, and over 7,000, of these were ‘permanent’, constituting 42 per cent of regular army commissions. This was deeply threatening to the identity of gentleman-officers that had embedded a culture of gentlemanliness parsed into the rules and behaviours that governed army life and the homo-social space of the officers’ mess. This investigation shows the emergence of the ranker officer identity, progressively defined during the war through a process of Othering in terms of socio-cultural differences, particularly presentation and speech. The post-war officer class resumed its pre-war social and cultural character, maintaining its exclusivity and ethos and the ranker officer was increasingly caricatured in the discourses surrounding regimental officering and Englishness. The ranker officer, is fully examined for the first time in this thesis and this examination crucially informs our understanding of the persistence of an elite through the continuing gentlemanly appropriation of British army officer identity.

The Third Battle of Ypres was officially terminated by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig with the opening of the Battle of Cambrai on 20 November 1917. Nevertheless, a comparatively unknown set-piece attack – the only large-scale night operation carried out on the Flanders front during the campaign – was launched twelve days later on 2 December. This thesis, a necessary corrective to campaign narratives of what has become popularly known as ‘Passchendaele’, examines the course of events from the mid-November decision to sanction further offensive activity in the vicinity of Passchendaele village to the barren operational outcome that forced British GHQ to halt the attack within ten hours of Zero. A litany of unfortunate decisions and circumstances contributed to the profitless result. At the tactical level, a novel hybrid set-piece attack scheme was undermined by a fatal combination of snow-covered terrain and bright moonlight. At the operational level, the highly unsatisfactory local situation in the immediate aftermath of Third Ypres’ post-strategic phase (26 October-10 November) appeared to offer no other alternative to attacking from the confines of an extremely vulnerable salient. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the affair occurred at the strategic level, where Haig’s earnest advocacy for resumption of the Flanders offensive in spring 1918 was maintained despite obvious signs that the initiative had now passed to the enemy and the crisis of the war was fast approaching.

The Battle of the Sambre was the last large-scale set-piece battle of the Great War. The German army was determined to hold a defensive line incorporating the Mormal Forest and the Sambre-Oise canal, hoping to buy time for a strategic withdrawal to the Meuse and thereby negotiate a compromise peace. This thesis analyses the battle at the operational and tactical levels: the BEF was no longer striving for a breakthrough – sequential ‘bite and hold’ was now the accepted method of advance. The difference between plan and reality is examined, highlighting the levels of tactical competence of units engaged and also the role of the Royal Engineers, whose tasks involved devising improvised bridging equipment to facilitate the crossing of the waterway. The competence of brigade and battalion commanders is examined: some proved capable of pragmatic flexibility in the face of stubborn enemy resistance and were able to adapt or even abandon original plans in order to ensure ultimate success. It was a decisive victory for the BEF, which irrevocably crushed the will of the German defenders, leading to the pursuit of a demoralised, broken and beaten army, whose means of continued resistance had been destroyed, and thus expedited the armistice.

During the First World War people from the five continents resided in France and Flanders, mostly in service of of the French and British armies. Besides European settlers, it concerned hundreds of thousands of indigenous inhabitants from many colonies. The two largest subaltern groups who served on the Western Front in British service - each in itself accounting for some 140,000 men - were Asian: from the Indian subcontinent and from China. In my book I investigate not only their motives to join up and the nature of their war service on the Western Front, but above all how these subaltern groups experienced a modern war in Europe and what impact this residence in a Europe-in-war had on their subsequent lives and on the society to which they returned. A central position in my judgment of their war experiences is their meeting with the European 'other', the local populations who hosted these uninvited guests. I investigate how the European population underwent the confrontation with their non-European guests, but especially which impression the Europeans, their society and their culture made upon the Asian rank and file. In- and outside the Army Indians and Chinese were confronted with different degrees of xenophobia, racism and discrimination, while at the same time friendly engagements with Europeans also occurred. All this lead to a strengthened self- and (proto)national consciousness that manifested itself in initiatives in different domains of human activity: politics, culture, education, ... Through the comparative perspective, differences as well as similarities between both Asian groups on the Western Front become clear, and parallels can be drawn in their evolution towards a stronger (self)consciousness and an increasing identification with the (proto)nation through their war experiences in Europe. In this respect, so I argue, the war experiences of Indians and Chinese on the Western front contributed to the increasingly anti-imperialist feelings and attitudes in both countries.