Meeting the Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page B

opened, but on no occasion were we offered the least incivility.’ As interesting as these counterpoints are, they are less interesting historically than The Times ’s decision to publish them. Britain had yet to become as incensed with Germany as Germany evidently was with Britain. That time would soon come.
    At her hotel in Schwalbach, Hilda Pickard-Cambridge was gradually feeling bolder. After a week she began to venture outside and was reassured by a somewhat perverse notice that English people should not be molested, just in case they turned out to be Americans. Hers was a strange existence. There were no guests at the hotel and so the maids were released and, with the exception of the proprietors, the building was deserted. Hilda waited, not knowing if she might be picked up by either her husband or the Germans. She looked out for war news but this was tainted by aggressive propaganda: it was said that Britain had declared war before Germany had invaded Belgium, that the British instigated the murder of the Austrian Archduke to pre-empt a war that would crush Germany. And then came the news from the front. The Germans were winning hands down, Paris would fall very soon and London shortly afterwards. It all made for dismal reading.
     
    As Britain went to war, MPs voted to pass the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) to secure the safety of the nation. It was a broad-sweeping Act, frequently modified, giving the government wide-ranging powers over public and press, with rights to requisition property and land and to control the transport network, including railways, docks and harbours. Individuals contravening the Act were liable to court martial with fines, imprisonment and even death as options.
    Notably, DORA forbade communication that would endanger in any way ‘the success of the operations of His Majesty’s forces’. With Germans constituting the third highest immigrant population, it was self-evident that specific legislation was needed to control the movement and activities of foreign nationals and enemy aliens in particular, the perceived threat from whom the press would quickly and vociferously highlight.
    On 5 August, Reginald McKenna, the Liberal Home Secretary, presented legislation to the House of Commons restricting the movement of all foreigners (the Aliens Restriction Act), and was greeted with broad cross-bench support. Hansard recorders included in parentheses the cheers that met his speech. McKenna assured Members that arrangements had been made to cause as little disturbance to the daily lives of ‘alien friends’ as was possible under the circumstances (that is, the lives of foreigners who were not German, Austrian or Hungarian), while at the same time helping to root out dangerous spies (loud cheers and cries of ‘shoot them’). In another example of early calm, McKenna pointed out that there was ‘concern that Germans who were long resident in the country should be protected’. MPs responded with questions.
     
Mr [Joseph] King (Somerset, North) – As one acquainted with many German subjects, some of whom have been resident in the country for many years and are much more British in sentiment than German (hear, hear), I should like some assuring words from the Home Secretary that some regard will be had for these persons. There is a very great deal of apprehension among such persons at the present time. (Cries of ‘Agreed’)
Mr McKenna (Monmouth, North) – Alien enemies against whom there is no reason whatever to suppose that they are secretly engaged in operations against this country will be subjected to nothing further than registration and the provision that they may not live in the prohibited areas.
     
    In those first days of war there was no uniform, headlong rush to condemn everything German or Austrian. Newspapers such as the influential East London Observer still took on the mantle of guiding as opposed to being buffeted or swayed by public sentiment. On 8 August, the same day