Recruitment to the British Army during the First World War

At the beginning of 1914 the British Army had a reported strength of 710,000 men including reserves, of which around 80,000 were regular troops ready for war. By the end of World War I almost 1 in 4 of the total male population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had joined up, over five million men. Of these men, 2.67 million joined as Volunteers and 2.77 million as conscripts (although some volunteered after conscription was introduced and would most likely have been conscripted anyway). Monthly recruiting rates for the army varied dramatically.

For a century, British governmental policy and public opinion was against conscription for foreign wars. At the start of World War I, the British Army consisted of six infantry divisions, one cavalry division in the United Kingdom formed after the outbreak of war, and four divisions overseas. Fourteen Territorial Force divisions also existed, and 300,000 soldiers in the Reserve Army. Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, considered the Territorial Army untrained and useless. He believed that the regular army must not be wasted in immediate battle, but instead used to help train a new army with 70 divisions—the size of the French and German armies—that he foresaw would be needed to fight a war lasting many years.

The British had about 5.5 million men of military age, with another 500,000 reaching 18 each year. The initial call for 100,000 volunteers was far exceeded, almost half a million men enlisted in two months (see the graph). Around 250,000 underage boys also volunteered; either by lying about their age or giving false names which recruiters often turned a blind eye to. Naturally thereafter there were fewer, though volunteering was still ardently promoted by the most effective recruiting poster ever drawn (pictured above), newspaper reports of German barbarities that were supported later by eminent historians, pressure from employers who promised to keep jobs open, some Poor Law Guardians who refused to support fit military-aged men, and orations by politicians and public figures. They built on Kipling’s questions, "What stands if Freedom falls? Who dies if England lives?"

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