The Henson Journals
Wed 9 December 1914
Volume 20, Pages 85 to 87
[85]
Wednesday, December 9th, 1914.
128th day
This afternoon Ella & I motored to Newcastle, & attended a meeting in the Tyne Theatre convened in the interest of the "Women's Emergency Corps", an association mainly of suffragists & suffragettes. The Lord Mayor presided: Miss Lena Ashwell spoke. I made a short speech. Then when Miss Moore started ranting & raking in money, we came away, nowise approving this horrid blend of the actress's emotional tricks with the sectary's financial methods.
[87]
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We dined with Mr Justice Shearman at the castle. The Solicitor General (Buckmaster) was there. They had come to Durham for the trial of Ahlers, the German consul, on a charge of high treason. A verdict of guilty had been reached, & a sentence of death had been passed.
In conversation the S.G. expressed himself very depressingly about the war. He said that Germany was making immense efforts to drive a wedge between England & France: that the recent concentration of malignity on England was thereby explained: that a certain measure of success was attending the attempt to educate French opinion against England: & that Grey was anxious. He said that he had himself asked K. of K. what the situation in Poland actually was: and that K. of K. replied that, after prolonged efforts to understand the Russian reports, he had totally failed to do so. I was pleased to hear the S.G. say on the authority of his special information through the Press Bureau, that he did not believe the stories of German atrocities. This statement accords with the similar declaration of Sir Wm Osler, based on his experience in the military hospital at Oxford. It depressed me to hear the Judge express his conviction that this war, so far from leading to a better ordering of international life, would inaugurate a still more warlike phase of history: that England, having raised a great army, would not again content herself with a small one: that Germany was really unconquerable: & that the best thing for everybody would be to patch up peace as soon as possible. There is a dreadful reasonableness about this reasoning, yet, when I think of the chivalrous youth who are rushing abroad & dying in Belgium & France in order to put an end to 'Militarism', I cannot coerce myself into accepting it.
Issues and controversies: female suffrage