Thursday June 13^th, 1918

Reveille 4:30. Parade P.F Gas. Arms drill. Lieutenant Barker ?? nearly tells us France. Wrote home and Fred Sutton. Very hot again. Parade night 5:15. My hands are bad. I go to Medical Officer’s hut, got liniment and pills. Hands awful. Went to flickety flicks [Clickety Clicks – see comments] – poor show.

Hands Bad

Frank’s hands ‘are bad’ and he is given medicine by the Medical Officer.  It is unclear what is wrong.  It could be to do with Sandfly Fever – one of the symptoms of which is blister-like wounds.  Thanks to Charlie (see comments) Frank didn’t go to the cinema, instead he went to see the Clickety Clicks.  Clearly he didn’t rate this particular show. This is an important clarification as, according to my Mum, her parents did not approve of and never went to the cinema.

The Imperial War Conference

Back in Blighty, the second annual meetings of the Imperial War Conference and Imperial War Cabinet started two days ago.  They will run for a fortnight and are attended by the Dominions (Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) and India.

They were created in spring 1917 by the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, in recognition of the contribution of the Dominions and India to the war effort. He felt it important to consult them more fully in the prosecution of the war itself.¹

A New Age of Empire

At its inaugural meetings in 1917, there was considerable public excitement that its formation might usher in a new age of Empire in peacetime.  Possibly even a federal structure of imperial governance.   Some welcomed the idea, believing that a federal system would expand the Dominions’ influence on key topics like Foreign Policy.  However many others across the Dominions feared that it would diminish the executive powers of their own parliaments.²

The mood of the second meetings is more muted. The setbacks of recent months have made victory, certainly in the short term, less likely. Therefore many believe that giving much thought to the war’s aftermath is little more than a pipe dream.

That said, a Guardian article pondered the ‘… intense diversity of the Empire and the enormous difficulties of compressing it within any formula…. It is these considerations which make one doubt whether the germ of centralization implanted in the last Imperial conference is at present capable of any important development.

It can go just so far as the Dominions themselves desire, but experience, so far, has seemed to show that the looser the bond the stronger, and that the great fabric of the British commonwealth must be left to shape itself as the conditions of its growth and the changing circumstances of the world may dictate.’²

It is interesting that the word ‘commonwealth’ is already being used.

Post War

Most historians and commentators seem to agree that the Dominions, participating in WWI as nations, with their own Regiments and units, battle honours and battle scars helped weaken the Imperial tethers and create a sense of national identity in each country.

This was probably reinforced by the Paris Peace Conference wherein each Dominion nation was represented.

13^th (Service) Battalion War Diary – 13^th June 1918 – La Marraine

Work and fatigues as before.

References & Further Reading

¹ Imperial War Cabinet on Wikipedia

² Article entitled ‘The Imperial Conference’, June 12th, page 4, The Guardian newspaper.

* Imperial War Cabinet, from Wikimedia, photograph from Library of Congress, public domain (see also for list of participants)