Wales and First World War by Nickglais Part 2 : The Heart and Soul of the Anti War Opposition Niclas y Glais

                                                             Niclas y Glais

 "Not one public figure … including ministers was a pacifist. I travelled a lot through Wales talking about peace and correcting some of the deceitful remarks that were being made about the cause of war."

Niclas y Glais


In January 1914, Niclas y Glais ( Niclas of Glais) left Glais near Swansea  - a village whose name he would carry for the rest of his life  - for the Cardiganshire village of Llangybi, to be pastor of two Welsh Independent churches, Ebeneser, Llangybi and Llanddewi Brefi.

By August 1914 the quiet was shattered even in  peaceful Llangybi by the outbreak of the First World War.

At once Niclas y Glais turned his efforts to condemning the War.

In Part 1 of this study we showed how War emotions and anti German feelings were running at fevour pitch in Wales as well as the rest of Britain and no public figures or Church leaders in Wales opposed the War with  Germany, so it took strong moral and personal courage to take the stand against the war that Niclas y Glais did in 1914.

In November 1914 Orders in Council from the Government forbid publishing anything against the War.

‘forbid publishing anything that is likely to retard recruiting or reflect in any way on the actions of the Government with regard to the war. The penalty is suppression of publication and
confiscation.’

However this did not stop Niclas y Glais writing a series of articles on ‘The Unjust War’ in The Merthyr Pioneer.

In 1915 his  close friend Keir Hardie died,  it is said his heart broken by working class acceptance of all the anti German  hysteria and the emotional Jingoism of the time. Kier Hardie was booed at public meetings beacuse of his anti War stance.

Niclas y Glais  preached the sermon in the memorial service for Kier Hardie at Siloa Chapel in Aberdare in 1915 , with police in the congregation taking notes.

Niclas y Glais was then summoned for sedition under the notorious Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) for his sermon.

In the end the  Home Office refused to proceed with the prosecution has it was a service to commemorate a prominent pacifist and socialist.

                                                       

Again in  1918 the authorities used DORA to bring him before the Lampeter magistrates for a
sermon he had preached in his own church but he succeeded in getting the case dismissed by
showing that the comments which caused offence were in fact a quotation from Philip Gibbs.

At the beginning of January 1918 Nicholas as a minister of religion received a circular from the National War Aims Committee requesting him to engage his congregation on a certain appointed Sunday in a 'Day of Prayer' to the 'Lord of Hosts' for his blessing on the war effort. He refused.

"I cannot subscribe to a single item set forth in your letter; and I think it is only right that you should know that. When I think of Mesopotamia and the Dardanelles and Ireland, I cannot admit that God has been with us. When I think of the treatment  meted out to the Conscientious Objectors, and to the Peace Workers, I cannot ask the Father of all men to bless the methods of the country. I believe that Germany did as much as any country to avoid the war in 1914; and I know that Germany has  done more than any country to bring the war to an end. I feel it my duty to let you know that the desire for peace is very strong; and the churches have seen their mistake in committing themselves to the War Aims of the War Cabinet without knowing what those aims were"

On Sunday, 29 September 1918, Niclas y Glais and W. C. Anderson M.P. were to address a

meeting of ILP at  Mountain Ash but the meeting had to be abandoned because of the trouble

caused by discharged soldiers, whose abuse included such sentiments as ‘You would let the

Germans come here’ and ‘Get these conscientious objectors off the stage or else we will come

down and do it.’

A certain Captain Lindsay who saw it has his mission in life to "get"  Niclas y Glais in October 1918 sent a dossier on the Special Branch containing transcripts of some of Niclas’s recent speeches in Glamorgan, claiming that he found sedition in the speaker’s abuse of Prime Minister Lloyd George, his   description of King George V as  ‘an individual who has not sufficient talent to be Chairman of a Parish Council’ 'and his attacks on the whole capitalist system.

However, this was overtaken by the event of the Armistice of 11 November 1918

Niclas y Glais  received an invitation from the ILP to stand as a candidate in the Aberdare constituency in the 1918 election. His opponent was a local man who had won the seat in succession to Keir Hardie. 

Stanton stood for the group called the National Democratic Party (NDP) Niclas y Glais  was reportedly mistreated. He won 6,229 votes to Stanton's 22,824, a majority of 16,595.

During this period Niclas also had been active in organising the Cardiganshire lead miners and the establishment of  an Agricultural labourers Union in North Pembrokeshire and Cardigan in 1918.

He resigned from the religious ministry in 1918 and established himself as a dentist in Pontardawe and by 1920 was one of those present that founded the Communist Party in Wales. 

Niclas y Glais was a spokeman for the Gwerin the Folk or Common People of Wales and not for the Crachach to which everything Welsh is just an opportunity for personal ambition - Lloyd George epitomises this opportunist current in Welsh Life national life which on the back of Welsh issues climb into politics but when London calls shed Wales for the Empire or the British in line with the Cymmrodorion in the 18th century.

It is time we realised that in Wales the real enemies are not the English but the Crachach who Speak Wales or Welsh, but Practice England and English .

Just like the First World War gave us in the Labour Party of Socialists in words but Imperialists in deeds - Social Imperialism.

Niclas y Glais connected to the Gwerin and built his politics on a solid base and hated the pro Imperialist Crachach and the Social Imperialists  - we would do well to emulate him today.

Wales and First World War by Nickglais : Part 1 - Northcliffe's editorship of the Daily Mail in the run-up to the First World War, when the paper displayed "a virulent anti-German sentiment", led The Star to declare, "Next to the Kaiser, Lord Northcliffe has done more than any living man to bring about the war."

                                                                      Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (1865–1922)

Now that were are approaching 2014 the 100th anniversary of the First World War we will publish a series of articles highlighting aspects of the First World War with reference to Wales, that still impact our lives in some way today, and we are starting with the mass media and Alfred Harmsworth - Lord Northcliffe  and his contribution to the Imperialist mindset in British Isles and Wales.

After the signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904 between Britain and France, attitudes towards Germany and German residents in Britain changed for the worse..

A fear of German militarism replaced a previous admiration for German culture and literature. Authors and journalists  produced a stream of articles on the threat posed by Germany at the behest of Alfred Harmsworth for the Daily Mail.
 

In 1894 Alfred Harmsworth had commissioned author William Le Queux to write the serial novel The Great War in England in 1897, which featured Germany, France and Russia combining forces to crush Britain.

In 1897 Alfred Harmsworth had also sent the writer G. W. Steevens to Germany to produce a sixteen-part series entitled Under the Iron Heel. The articles praised the German Army and warned that Britain was in danger of being defeated in a war against Germany.

In 1900  Northcliffe wrote an editorial in the Daily Mail predicting a war with Germany

In October 1909 Northcliffe employed Robert Blatchford, the Socialist editor of the Clarion, to visit Germany to write a series of articles on the dangers that the Germans posed to Britain.

Northcliffe's choice of a socialist showed how perceptive he was has, socialists were declared anti war in the Second International, and Blatchford the author of Merrie England a socialist book that had sold two million copies in Britain was used by Northcliffe to help develop Social Imperialism  (Socialist in words Imperialists in deeds)  in Britain during the First World War has the ideology of the British Labour Party.

Blatchford agreed with Northcliffe on the problem and in one article wrote: "I believe that Germany is deliberately preparing to destroy the British Empire" and warned that Britain needed to spend more money in defending itself against attack.

Harmsworth  also asked  William Le Queux  to republish his 1894 article in Daily Mail , promising the full support of his formidable advertising capabilities. 

The result was the bestselling The Invasion of 1910, which originally appeared in serial form in the  Daily Mail in 1906 and has been referred to by historians as inducing an atmosphere of paranoia, mass hysteria and Germanophobia that would climax in the Naval Scare of 1908–09.

Nothing more exemplifies the state of anti German hysteria in Britain whipped up by Lord Northcliffe  than British attitudes even to animals thought to be German during the First World War, the dachshund dog, being a prime example.

The writer Graham Greene in his memoirs recalls dachshund dogs being attacked in his home town during First World War.

 James Hayward, the author of Myths and Legends of the First World War (2002) has pointed out: “Famously, dachshund dogs (although not apparently Alsatians) were put to sleep or attacked in the streets, a persecution which endured so long that in the years following the war the bloodline had to be replenished with foreign stock.”

It was against this background of anti German hysteria that the First world war was launched.

To get a flavour of how people thought about the First World War in Wales in 1914 here is the recollection of Frank Richards on August 4th 1914.

"On the 4th August 1914 ,I was in Blaina Monmouthshire having a drink in the Castle Hotel with a few of my old cronies , all of them old soldiers and most of the reservists.

One had took us around South Africa and there wasn't a Boer left in South Africa by the time he had finished his yarn.

Next I took them around Burma and India and there wasn't a Pathan or Dacoit left in the world by the time I had finished mine.

Now another was taking us through North China and the Boxer Rising of 1900 and he had already got hundreds of chinks hanging from gas brackets when some one came in with a piece of news, he said that War had broken out with Germany."

Frank Richards - Old Soldiers Never Die - 1933

Wales had the British Imperialist mentality in bucketloads in 1914 and with appeals to defend little Belgium in Britain by Lloyd George emotions were running high .

 Britain that had invaded more countries in the world any other even by 1914. It is currently estimated that there are only 22 countries in the world that Britain has not invaded. But the irony of this was lost in the hysteria of 1914 and little Belgium.. 

Therefore it should come as no surprise that in Wales 13.77% of the population of Wales enlisted to fight in First World War.

In England it was 13.30% and in Scotland 13.% in Ireland 3.87%.

All told 280,000 people out of a Welsh population of two and half million participated in the First World War.

David Lloyd George

Why were so many Welsh People prepared to die for another country but never fought for their own ?  part of the answer lies in Lloyd George and his demagogic oratory but the Imperialist mindset in Wales has even earlier roots than Lord Northcliffe and Lloyd George and the names of some Welsh streets still reveal it with their Sebastapol terraces reflecting  how Wales rallied to the British Flag during the Crimean War in the 1850's.

However the origins of the British Empire in the 18th Century not only found Scots wanting to participate in Empire but also the London Welsh in the Cymmrodorion.

Therefore 1914 exposes much about Welsh Society that continues to this day but there were a very small number of individuals in Wales who stood out against the First World War and we will address their insights about Wales and their contributions in Part 2 of this article.