How effectively did the British Government recruit civilians into the armed forces?

Kitchener correctly predicted at the beginning of the war that it would be a drawn out land based war which would last 3 years.

Britain had a small professional army having relied on its navy to defend Britain and small armies aboard to control its empire.

As the war became a stalemate based on defensive trench warfare a large land army was needed.

Initially volunteers flooded to recruitment offices with over 500,000 men volunteering in the first few months. The government used propaganda to help with this process such as recruitment posters, songs, postcards, articles, recruitment rallies and parades. The newspapers also added to this with its anti-German attitude and pro war stance.



Men personally volunteered for a variety of reasons patriotism, peer pressure, guilt, adventure etc. Other subjected to a mixture of pressures and emotions.

The key question however is did everyone volunteer for the same reasons and did everyone view enlisting in the same way. Analysis of the evidence shows people may have been for or against enlisting but had their own personal reasons.