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The Non-Demobilised Man

Raemaekers, Louis, 1919, Chromolithograph
The Non-Demobilised Man
The Non-Demobilised Man
The Non-Demobilised Man
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Category
Library Item
Item no
33511
Title
The Non-Demobilised Man
Description
"After four years' incessant fighting, the bloodiest in history, Germany acknowledged defeat, the armistice terms including the occupation of the Rhine bridges. But the effort of Great Britain has been tremendous and the cost terrible before the first British soldier kept guard on German soil. 'It was on 8th August 1914 that Kitchener sent forth his call for 'the first hundred thousand' - and they volunteered within a fortnight. At the end of the war's first year 2,000,000 had joined the colours. In May 1916 King Gorge made public announcement that more than 5,000,000 men (all volunteers) had entered the Army and the Navy. Yet, instead of diminishing, the stream of British manhood became a veritable flood, so that in August of the present year Lloyd George was able to state that the British Empire had raised for the Army and Navy a total of more than 8,500,000 men. The first expeditionary force called forth by Kitchener, that handful of 100,000 men hastily mobilised and somehow sent across the Channel, was almost annihilated. A single division lost 10,000 men out of 12,000 while out of 400 officers only 50 escaped casualty. By December 1915, British casualties had mounted to practically 78 per cent of the entire original land forces. An official statement on 15th August 1918 announced that up to that date 900,000 British soldiers and sailors had suffered death. More recent losses bring the total well up above, 1,000,000. It must be remembered that British forces have been fighting not only in France, Belgium, Italy, Russia, Siberia, and the Balkans, but also in Kiaochow, New Guinea, Samoa, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine, Cameroons, Togoland, East Africa, South-West Africa, Aden, Persia, and along the north-west frontier of India. - Henry Rood, in 'Collier's.'"
Artist / maker
Date
1919
Size
34.6 x 24.8 cm
Location
Art and Design Library
Copyright
Louis Raemaekaers' drawings are reproduced by kind permission of the Louis Raemaekers Foundation.