This article explores the many emotions – apprehension, anxiety, shock, disorientation and fear – experienced by the British people in a month when family and personal lives were ripped apart by an unprecedented international crisis.
Investigating the national mood, it argues that already, in August 1914, a new moral order was replacing the careless- ness of the long Edwardian peace. The outline and chief features of this new moral order, fully apparent by the end
of the year, were being established.
The jingoism and war fever of August 1914 have been
shown to be a myth. The crowds outside Buckingham Palace in the first week of the month were mostly
middle-class young men in straw boaters, drawn there by
uncertainty and the search for news. The ultimatum to Germany expired on the evening of the day after a Bank Holiday. This was picnicking time in the London parks. More people were out on the streets than usual in other towns, too. Vera Brittain recorded that she was part of an ‘excited little group’, which gathered on August 4th to watch the territorials mobilise at Buxton in Derbyshire