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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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If anyone else wants to do a fanfic set in any of HTs worlds, the rules are these:
Chapter taken from, “Spencer Chaplin: Biography of a
Surrealist.” Oxford, 1997. Chapter Three That the war was a turning point in Spencer’s life is self-evident. A music hall clown had reported to his Territorial battalion in August 1914; a sombre and unsmiling man returned from Canada three years later. None of this was lost on Spencer himself, as the hollow-eyed, skeletal clowns and harlequins that haunt his early paintings demonstrate. The recurring image of a pair of battered boots in desperate need of repair in later works, is often taken as an anti-war statement, but could have had other meanings for Spencer – his grandfather had been a boot maker. Unquestionably the war brought loss into Chaplin’s life, with the death of a brother, and many friends and comrades, not to mention the civilian suffering he witnessed in Southern Ontario. Often overlooked by art historians is the loss of his music hall career, as the machine gun bullet that shattered Spencer’s pelvis ruled out a return to a career as a clown, with its requisite tumbling. This was a heavy blow to Chaplin, and the sacrifice appeared to have been in vain when Canada was lost. Like so many of his fellow countrymen, in 1917 a brooding inner anger spawned in Spencer’s mind. That anger would drive so many in Britain, France, and the Confederacy, into the grasp of political extremists in the next two decades – in Chaplin, it was to begat some of the most radical painting in twentieth century art. His early life spent building a name in the music halls, the young Spencer felt torn between personal internationalist leanings, and the nationalistic climate of the Edwardian era. Patriotic songs and themes went down well with vaudeville audiences, although the slapstick comedy routines allowed Chaplin some distance from the Jingoism of his chosen occupation. The two years compulsory military service, between 1907 and 1909, had not been a difficult experience. Excelling in gymnastics and drill, Spencer was courted by his platoon commander and training instructors, as a potential regular soldier. Working for Frank Karno’s company had taken him twice to the United States before the war, in 1910 and 1912. On the second visit Spencer had been approached by Keystone Studios on a film deal. Tired of touring and despairing of backwoods audiences, Chaplin seriously considered the lucrative Keystone offer. “Had I gone to work at Keystone, I’d probably been interned for the duration, then gone back into movies when it was all over,” Chaplin told a New York Times reporter in 1935, a comment many art historians have suggested was a joke. An art world without Chaplin is difficult to contemplate and it is easy to assume he would have discovered painting eventually, however, there is much evidence to suggest he was committed to vaudeville. “It was an unusual experience to walk past a shabby billet that could offer the residents little protection against the Canadian winter, yet hear nothing but gales of laughter coming from within. Immediately you knew Chaplin was capering again,” wrote one of the few surviving officers from Spencer’s battalion. Evidently the clown had lived on into the war, but also the artist began to emerge, just as the paramilitary leader took shape in fellow Karno clown, and Spencer’s room-mate while touring the US, Albert Jefferson. The war scare of 1913 dissuaded Chaplin from taking up the Keystone offer, and persuaded Karno to return the company to Britain. The Karno company were touring Lancashire when war was declared in August 1914, and was in Bury on the actual day of declaration. Several biographers have claimed that Spencer was against the war from the beginning, based on misgivings on the conflict expressed in letters to his brother, Stephen, who was mobilised into the Navy. However, this seems more likely to have been an understandable reluctance to see any war occur, for general as well as personal reasons. Spencer appears to have been very much in step with the public mood of anger at the news of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, quoting aloud to the Karno company from the front page editorial of the Daily Mail over the breakfast table in their Bury lodgings. “It is a coincidence of great proportion that the United States Navy should have the majority of its Pacific fleet just off the Sandwich Islands at such short notice to Britain’s declaration of war, in response to a crisis that has arisen suddenly. Does Mr Roosevelt expect us to believe that this was just the luck of chance? We suggest to our readers this was pre-planned, demonstrating the ill-will of a nation unable to bear the defeats handed to it in the last two conflicts fought against Albion.” To some extent the Royal Navy could have suffered a bigger set back that day, as the all-important Dreadnoughts were at sea when the enemy struck. Had the attack fallen in the afternoon, the most modern ships would have rejoined the Eastern Pacific Squadron. As it was, Colossus, Neptune and Vanguard, turned south with their accompanying cruisers to join up with the New Zealand squadron. Unknown to Admiral Robinson, the US force was held up outside of Pearl Harbour by Fort Kitchener, and a perfect opportunity was missed to win an immediate Pacific victory for Britain. Spencer and Jefferson did not wait for their War Office telegrams to track them down. Karno was persuaded to release the two, who travelled back to London together, intent on reporting to their depots. For Jefferson this was the London Scottish, and the Queen’s Surrey Regiment in the case of Chaplin. “Bright eyes, warm smiles, hands clapped on shoulders and locked in firm hand-shake”, was Spencer’s description of his parting from Albert Jefferson at St Pancras railway station, “that is how I like to remember our association. Not what came later.” The two continued to exchange letters throughout the war. Jefferson was to become a member of the third corps of Sir John French’s BEF in France. Third Corps was to consist of Territorial, National Service, and Yoemanry battalions, whose task was to guard the Pas-de-Calais. The Queen’s Surrey Regiment were bound Newfoundland, arriving the day that Jefferson would see his first action, when the London Scottish played its part in the defence of the Lille salient. The faster-than-expected mobilisation of Russia, heavy losses at Mons and Le Cateau, and the appearance of a large British Force in the northern channel ports (believed to be an Army not a Corps by German intelligence), prompted Von Kluck and Von Bulow to abandon their respective drives to Paris and the Ille de France, in order to release troops to plug the exposed flank and reinforce the eastern front. Chaplin read of the defence of Lille in St Johns, along with the repulse of the US Fifth Army’s assault on Fort Niagara –welcome early set backs for the Alliance to boost morale, and counter balance the loss of New Brunswick. The men of the second battalion of the Surreys seem to have been fired with patriotic spirit, “everyone is eager to get over to Canada, to the fighting in Quebec or Nova Scotia, and give a good account of ourselves”, wrote Spencer in a letter to his brother. Chapin and his comrades were to be quickly disillusioned. Being one of the unloved Territorial units, the Army brass chose to use them to release the regulars manning fortifications on the Newfoundland coastline for frontline service. News that a US fleet had been successfully repulsed south of Cape Race, confirmed that the Surreys were not likely to be called upon to defend Fort Roberts, their first home in North America. Spencer recalled to his biographer watching Admiral Higginson’s squadron returning from the action. “We saw the Dreadnoughts sailing back from their great battle. A marvellous sight, with flags flying, and men on deck waving to us. From the fort walls we cheered them as hard as we could, and fought the urge to cry. Everyone was so proud and so upset. We thought the war was going to end before we would have our chance to have a crack at the Yank.” Days at Fort Roberts were occupied with route marches, training, and musketry practice to bring the former civilians to something approaching combat ready level. There were also sentry duties and drills associated with manning the fort, but there was a lot of boredom for the troops. This boredom was the father of Spencer’s artistic career, resulting in the first sketches of the Fort and surroundings, drawn freely with pencil on lined notepaper, and now on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They famously resulted in Spencer being questioned by the Military Police, after an overzealous member of the local Militia (who helped man the Fort) reported him as a potential spy who was recording the fort’s defences. Autumn advanced, the fronts stabilised in North America and Europe, and the Territorials began to toughen up and shoot straighter. Few were close to Spencer’s level of fitness though, and once again the Army eyed him as an instructor, offering the chance to sit out the war in Newfoundland. A letter from Albert Jefferson, which had been cropped by the censor, settled Chaplin’s mind. “I’m writing at a child’s desk in a schoolhouse in Lille, with blue sky in place of a ceiling. We’re ----- -- ---------- and have suffered heavy casualties, but the lads are hanging in here. The strength of feeling that our mates should not have died for nothing keeps us going, and the stories of executions and atrocities by the Hun makes our cause a just one.” Third Corps was now being edged back, through the eastern suburbs of Lille, and would by early December be entrenched to the west of the city. By this time, Spencer was on a transport bound for the Canadian mainland, departing St Johns on December 7th 1914 - the day the US flag was raised over Halifax, Nova Scotia. The following day Fort Niagara finally capitulated, while back in Britain ration coupons for tea, coffee and sugar were issued. Through a round about series of river and railway journeys, the Surreys arrived in Hamilton, Ontario, where they were issued warm clothing, then bundled into London buses, and proceeded to Grimsby. Here they found themselves in reserve, and put to work under the direction of the Royal Engineers, building what would be the front line in the Summer of 1915. According to Chaplin, “there was still a lot of frustration among the men. We knew the brass hats were holding us Territorials back, as they didn’t reckon us. Nor would they give us a chance to prove them wrong. All the same, despite what we said in front of one another, everyone had noted just how cold it was, and guessed that billets in Grimsby, with generous hospitality from our Canadian hosts, would be preferable to living in the freezing trenches and dug-outs.” The winter would ravage both armies, but hit the US troops hardest, as the Canadians and British troops had fallen back from Niagara on to prepared positions, fitted with bunkers and positioned on high ground. The Americans opposite had to make do with trenches dug where their advance had been halted, hastily scratched with spades, and strengthen with sandbags, foraged timber and scrap metal. The frozen ground and prowling snipers, hampered efforts to make improvements, but early war ammunition shortages prevented the Canadian and British artillery from seriously adding to the invader’s woes. The men who coped best with the cold were probably the Ghurkhas, whose arrival in Canada, via Alaska, had been an intrepid adventure in itself. Tales of the exploits of the Nepalese hill men in the front line in Manitoba and the Rockies, many of them of dubious truthfulness, filled the newspapers. If their combat prowess did not reach the levels suggested by certain journalists, it was sufficient to inspire fear among US troops. The men of the Surreys were right about one thing, the Army high command did not have much faith in them. A conservative institution at the best of times, the Army had not welcomed the introduction of compulsory military service in 1905. The professional soldiers were separated from the transitory conscripts by the division between regular and national service battalions. On completing two years service, conscripts became reservists in the part-time Territorial Army. The National Servicemen were considered by the army to be capable of garrison and secondary duties. Territorials were not even considered for overseas duties until 1912, with the addition to the British war plan of the all National Service/Territorial Third Corps, which had only been intended to sit on the French channel ports – events, of course, dictated otherwise. Despite Third Corps’s success, the Army was only grudgingly committing British National Service and Territorial battalions in Canada – their Canadian opposite numbers were treated differently on the grounds they were defending their homeland. Chaplin would finally see the front line in January 1915, when the battalion moved into the trenches west of St Catherines, as part of the British Corps of Canadian Third Army. “We were excited, but shocked as well. The front hadn’t taken on its moon surface-like appearance at that point, but the devastation was obvious, with wrecked houses and broken trees. The stench of dead horses and cattle forced you to fight the urge to gag.” They quickly discovered why the army had misgivings on sending them into action. “The snipers had a merry time with us, as we had little concept of concealment, and made mistakes that induced horror among the Canadian engineers, who were strengthening the defences. First day in a forward position, my section lost two men. One called Owen came from the Walworth Road. We had been quite friendly.” Fortunately, Spencer found himself in quiet sector, as the US Fifth army opposite had been weakened considerably by the fighting of the previous year, and winter ruled out continuing the offensive. The Canadians and British took advantage of the respite, and applied themselves to laying barbed wire, accustoming newcomers to the trenches, and stockpiling precious ammunition. The US Fifth Army renewed its offensive in the Spring of 1915, when the Surreys were in the line near Welland. The Army of Canada’s high command had received news a week earlier of the use of poison gas against Confederate troops in Kentucky, but the advice issued to troops in the line (damp a handkerchief or field dressing, then cover the nose and mouth) was close to useless, and the first gas masks were not yet available. Spencer was in a forward trench when the assault began. “We were very lucky, as the gas attack fell on the battalions to the left, due to the wind direction, and our position being on high ground. It was a chilling sight, watching that green cloud stretch forward across no-mans-land, and into the trenches. Men just bolted when they saw it coming. When the Yanks went over the top, the 18 pounders opened up and blew the first wave to pieces, but then fell silent. The next wave just faced a few shells, and intermittent rifle fire from the few brave souls who came back to their posts as the gas dispersed. The entire left was collapsing before our eyes.” The infamous shell shortage had meant that field guns only had limited ammunition to deal with this unexpected collapse in the line. Fortunately, Fifth Army had had to wait until late afternoon for the wind to turn towards the British lines, so the descent of night cloaked the withdrawal of troops on exposed flanks to the next line. The first day of the Battle of Welland was very much the US Fifth Army’s and would have been a fine victory, but for what happened the next day. General Barry’s trump card had been played, and the gas cylinders were empty. Moreover, the British had fallen back on the next line, and been joined by more experienced Canadian regulars. Yet, buoyed by intelligence reports that British prisoners were demoralised, the General pushed on with his offensive, not stopping to consider that the troops in the next line, who had not been gassed, might have more fight in them. “They were a splendid sight,” wrote Chaplin of the Americans, “marching forward in lines, officers out in front with revolvers. One officer was even on horseback, and he was first to go down. Their ranks convulsed when we opened fire, having let them get so close it was impossible to miss. They tried to rush us, but the wire in front was unpassable.” Thanks to the confusion of darkness, and the broken ground of the battlefield, attempts to bring forward the US guns the previous night had mostly been unsuccessful. The dawn attack had had little artillery support, leaving the wire and defences opposite largely intact. General Barry was convinced that the set back was temporary, and his enemy close to breaking point. Another two assaults were repulsed before darkness ended the engagement. “That night we were ordered back to another line, further back. We were angry, as we had won the day, and felt it seemed like handing the Yanks back the victory.” The War Department in Philadelphia also saw the withdrawal as evidence of a victory for the Fifth Army, rather than an enemy falling back on a stronger position, and sanctioned the release of further reserves to General Barry. They were squandered in fruitless attempts to hammer through the new line. By the time more gas arrived in the Summer, the masks that could offer some protection were widely distributed. The Canadian Third Army had been pushed back to the line running south from in front of Grimsby. South west of the trenches Spencer and his comrades manned, the US Sixth Army was painfully edging its way up from Michigan, which was set to join hands with the Fifth Army in the Autumn, as the Commonwealth troops fell back on their most formidable defences – the Plumer Line. ‘Contemptible little armies’ as Roosevelt described them, the Second and Third Canadian armies, despite British reinforcements, were heavily outnumbered by the forces opposite, but were now ensconced in deep underground complexes, some with running water and electric lights. Machine guns were housed in concrete pillboxes, behind forests of barbed wire. Once again, the Americans faced the Canadian winter in hastily dug works established where the advance had come to a halt, in front of the new line. Chaplin and his comrades, few of whom now were members of the original battalion that departed Liverpool the previous year, were pleased to hear their officers assure them that the Army intended to stand its ground now. “Falling back to the next line was getting the lads down. There was the on-going impression that the Yanks were winning. We wanted to stay put and let them break on us, like waves against a rock.” News of the Dreadnought raids on Halifax and the Dardanelles forts, and the evacuation of the US beachhead near Montreal, also buoyed morale. On the Great Plains, a Canadian officer, RE Lawrence, was causing chaos to thinly spread US garrisons with a regiment of irregular cavalry, which mostly consisted of the grandsons of Sioux Indians who had fled into Canada for sanctuary in the previous century. Further west, British intelligence agents made their way down the Rockies, to link up with Mormon leaders, pledging support for their rising. Little of the arms and assistance promised would ever arrive. In Europe, Flanders was now the only part of Belgium left unoccupied, but like in Canada, the invaders advance had been firmly arrested by prepared positions. “We hold a series of ridges around the city of Ypres,” wrote Albert to Spencer in December 1915. “The prisoners brought back from trench raids tell dismal stories of life on the other side. The area becomes boggy very easily, and as the Germans are in the low ground before us, their trenches flood whenever it rains. Their generals scent victory, so they push on with attacks through the worst downpours when the battlefield turns into a quagmire. Our machineguns plough them down. The thing is, we are far from breaking point, they’re just squandering good troops.” The war had started to take its toll on Albert, “I have trouble holding my hands straight sometimes. I’ve seen it in a couple of other blokes in the company who have been out here since the beginning. It comes and goes.” As the winter progressed several platoon members commented on Chaplin’s tendency to duck a snipers bullet, which had long since shot by. “I should write to Field Marshal Plumer and tell him that he’s worn me out,” Spencer wrote in a letter to his brother. Albert’s condition was set to progress, and he would be paralysed in hospital by the Summer of 1916. The chosen treatment was to be electric shocks administered through the soles of the feet. On spells being held in reserve, behind the lines, Spencer was sketching more often, with whatever paper came to hand. These followed the realist style of the Fort Roberts sketches, but displayed the sharp aggressive strokes that would characterise his later paintings in the 1930s, recalling the sufferings of Canadian civilians during the war. Chaplin mentioned his admiration of the people of Ontario in a letter to Albert, “its amazing to see people attempting to go about their normal lives – sweeping leaves in the garden, chopping wood for the fire, and so on – when nearby are craters from shells, and the occasional spent bullet falls to earth. Most have fled, but a resolute minority remain. Poles of normality in the midst of the whirlwind. The Canadians have so little, but still they are generous to us. I fell asleep on a train coming back from leave in Toronto. I awoke to find the carriage empty, and cigarette packets, sandwiches, and other treats, had been left on the seat beside me. A common experience for soldiers.” Canadians were not the only ones to find themselves with little. In Britain, food coupons had been extended to a range of goods. Shopping for groceries would challenge the usual stoic acceptance of queuing by the British. Across the UK, parks, gardens, football and cricket pitches, golf courses, heaths, and grasslands, were ploughed up and planted with potatoes. It was the spring of 1916 where the British fondness for horse meat finds its origins, a passion shared only by the Belgians. Ships had been switched from the run to South America, to the northern passage through the icebergs to Canada, where both sides were building up to deal the other a surprise blow in the summer. The Surreys had returned to the frontline in Ontario, near Acton, when US Sixth Army acting in concert with the Fifth Army launched their summer offensive, while the forces in the Quebec salient provided a diversionary attack. The idea was straightforward – the Plumer line facing a general assault would be overwhelmed, while Canadian reserves were divided between Ontario and Quebec. Moreover, the US had an ace up its sleeve, which Chaplin described to his biographer. “You heard them before you saw them, even in the din of battle. Belching great clouds of black smoke, rattling and growling. They moved at the speed of a casual stroll. The blokes in the first line just ran, and it was only the sight of the 18 pounders coming up that kept our nerve steady. There were three Barrels heading our way, but one had broken down before it reached the first line, and another went nose down into the first line trench at an awkward angle, and stuck fast. The guns did for the third, which was soon burning.” By spreading the attack, and the new Barrels, across the whole front, the US assault did not have the weight to flood the defences. Moreover, the Army of Canada had its own surprise for the attacking US troops. “There was no shell shortage in 1916, and it cheered us squaddies in the trenches to see the Yanks getting a taste of it back for a change. The guns blew the attacks to pieces, and smashed up the reinforcements as they followed up the spearhead units. The Yanks who made it into our lines were defending positions with the firing steps and loopholes facing the wrong way. We recovered the forward trenches on counter attacks, so everyone ended up back where they started off.” Ironically, the diversionary attack in Quebec was more successful, thanks to a short but intense barrage, followed by a swift forward advance, using new infantry tactics developed in the Rockies, but not yet generally adopted in the US Army. The Canadians had two more surprises for the US. The battle for control of the skies swung dramatically against the US that summer, with the arrival of Sopwith Pups - a new aircraft that gave the RCFC a clear advantage over the more numerous US squadrons. Banishing enemy planes from the skies prevented news leaking of the second surprise. In September, the Surrey’s advanced into no-mans-land behind one the new Canadian Barrels, built to a British design, as part of the Third Army’s Summer offensive. The Fifth Army opposite was demoralised and weakened by the assault on the Plumer line. Moreover, few reserves were available to reinforce them, as 1916 had been an expensive year in terms of manpower, after the successful Confederate offensive in the Roanoke valley, the failed invasion of Baja California, and the bloody campaign waged by General Custer in Kentucky. The smaller, rhomboid design of the Canadian Barrels proved better suited to the broken terrain, and new infiltration infantry tactics, drawing from experiences of fighting in the Rockies, delivered an astounding success for the Canadian Third Army. “It was the first time I saw Yanks surrender in large numbers, they’d just had enough. I’d got carried away, and got ahead of the rest, and was lobbing Mills bombs left and right. Then a voice shouts, ‘Alright, Canuck, that’s enough, we’re licked,’ and a dozen of them comes over the parapet with their hands up. I thought when they saw I was alone, they’d grab my pistol and bombs, and take me prisoner, but they just came along quietly. The only one who said a word was a corporal, who growled, ‘where are our Barrels?’” Later that day, Chaplin was sharing a cigarette with a US officer. “‘Where are you from, Yank?,’ I asks. He said, ‘You wouldn’t have heard of it. A place called Trenton.’ I told him that I had heard of it, and that I’d performed there in my vaudeville days. It turned out he’d seen me on stage. Soon, I was capering for him and his men, who were all laughing. Just ten minutes earlier they had looked like the world had ended.” That was to be his last performance, as the next day a machine gun round blew Chaplin off his feet, shattering his pelvis. “Hospital seems like another world, with everything clean and quiet, and women around,” wrote Chaplin to his brother, unaware that Stephen had died of wounds at the Battle of Jutland. “One of the nurses, Veronica, saw that I was downhearted, and found time to chat. I said there was no chance of being a clown again, as the doctor said I would walk with a limp. She asked if I had any hobbies. I said I liked drawing. Veronica got me a pencil and paper, and I sketched the ward. She was impressed and encouraged me to sketch the other patients, and the results were well received. I hope to persuade Veronica to sit for me.” The nurse was, of course, Veronica Brittain, and the sketch she posed for is the one to be found in the Tate Gallery in London. As a thank you for the sketch, Veronica gave Spencer a set of watercolour paints as he departed the hospital in Toronto. In convalescence, in Peterborough, Chaplin produced his first paintings, mostly landscapes, which display a surprisingly relaxed style. On the other side of the Atlantic, Jefferson had been discharged from hospital, and rushed back into active service, being sent as a replacement to a battalion serving in Ireland. In his autobiography, written in prison in the 1920s, Albert recalled the experience bitterly, “we felt stabbed in the back. Every man wanted to be on the western front, fighting the real enemy, and the hit-and-run tactics of the rebels was regarded as unfair and cowardly. On patrol in County Wexford, a sniper took out the bloke next to me, who was a friend and only young. I was livid, and couldn’t bear the idea that the sniper would just sneak away to strike again, as usually happened. I went straight off after him, pretending not to hear the officer calling me back. The sniper was just in the distance, making for the horizon, but I kept after him all day. He tried everything to shake me, from speeding up, to going to ground in the hope I’d pass him by. In the end he gave up and tried to surrender, but I wasn’t in the mood for any gentlemanly stuff anymore. I arrived back at the Police station where we were posted around midnight, carrying his scoped Springfield over my shoulder. When the Lieutenant tried to tick me off for disappearing I just stared him down. After that everyone gave me a wide berth.” Unable to return to combat, Spencer was taught to drive, then sent to Army of Canada headquarters. “I was kind of glad of the cushy number, and it was great fun behind the wheel of the big Rollers that served as Staff cars. The Police only ever waved through a car with HQ insignia, so you could really put your foot down, and hear the engine roar. Mostly, I was driving for Brigadier Harvey, Field Marshal Plumer’s head of intelligence. He was a proper gent. He would let me have a swig of his hip flask, which contained brandy sent out from France, and had no shortage of Havana cigars! ‘Contacts in the Navy’ he told me. Harvey had contacts everywhere, even in Philadelphia, and you really got the big picture with him in the back of the motor. I used to do ‘private’ stuff for him as well, like bringing girls back to his billet from the pricey knocking shops. I also told him what I overheard when chauffeuring other Staff officers around, or from the other drivers.” One of Harvey’s ‘rewards’ to Spencer for a particularly useful piece of HQ gossip was a set of oil paints and brushes. Removed from the dirt and damp of the front, Spencer was in a good position to further develop his art. The portrait of fellow driver, Bob Miles, which hangs in the Louvre, was Chaplin’s first oil painting. To Harvey, Spencer first mentioned the desire to go to art school after the war. In his new post at GHQ, Chaplin could see just how badly the war was going. In Spring in 1917, the main map in the war room showed much of the densely populated areas of southern Canada now in US hands. Quebec was in sight of the US lines, Montreal reduced to rubble, and Toronto came in range of the heaviest artillery. Winnipeg was a dangerously exposed salient, its eventual fall inevitable. General Maxwell Aitken, commanding the Canadian Fifth Army, warned Field Marshal Plumer that the line between Ottawa and the St Lawrence would soon have to be abandoned. The North Atlantic lifeline to Britain was still open, but the mother country pulled in three directions. As well as calls for help from Canada, there was the worsening situation in France, where the failed Nivelle offensive had prompted mutiny. In the South Atlantic, the already tenuous supply line to Argentina was to be further imperiled by a US Navy squadron spotted by aeroplanes from the Falkland Islands. “Harvey told me that no one had expected Canada to last this long, so now it had become a pawn for negotiations. As long as Canada held out it stopped the US turning its full might on the Confederacy. That made me bitter, to think we’d fought all that time, and the people at the top never believed we had a chance.” Come summer events swung dramatically in favour of the US. In June, the long struggle for Winnipeg came to an end, when the city’s defenders capitulated to prevent further civilian suffering. New Barrel tactics pioneered by General Custer in Tennessee, were adopted in Canada, resulting in breakthroughs that carried the US advance into Toronto and Quebec. Fighting was at an end in Europe, as the French forced the BEF to evacuate, having surrendered to the Germans. “Once the Confederacy surrendered, Canada could not be used to get better terms for Britain anymore. According to Harvey the Army of Canada’s supplies could be counted in days. All the brass hats had a big conference. A messenger brought a telegram for Harvey marked urgent, and the duty clerk on the intelligence desk asked if I’d mind taking it in, as I knew who to hand it to. As I was waved into the conference room, Field Marshal Plumer asked, ‘will no one speak in favour of continued resistance?’ The silence was icy, then Harvey said, ‘there is nothing to say in favour of continuing.’ All I could think about was the Surreys marching out to Fort Roberts, three years ago, singing Dolly Gray. There had been so much energy and talent, men who should have had so much to look forward to, and here I am one of the few left hearing that it had all come to nothing. Who knows what the world had lost through their deaths? What books wouldn’t be written, which voices were never heard in song, or orations left unspoken? We’ll not know what was denied us by that pointless war.” Spencer’s anti-war views were now firmly established, and his work ethic devoted to a new career as an artist. He would never visit a music hall again. The final break with his pre-war life came in a pub near Leicester Square, on Christmas Eve, 1917, where Chaplin and Albert Jefferson had their last, unfortunate meeting. “That night it came home just how much the world had changed, and me and Stan with it – Albert preferred to be called by his second name. I’ve never seen such hate in a man. He blamed everyone but the Tommy for the defeat – the generals, the politicians, trade unionists, socialists, the Irish. ‘Back stabbers’ he called them. There was no reasoning with him, and I think my disagreement with these views hurt Stan. I think we both resented shaking hands on parting, but to have not done so would have been a betrayal of the past. For me, and I suspect for Stan too, the past had offered more. Little but ill had occurred since August 1914.” The following Autumn, as Spencer began art college, Albert Jefferson formed his own paramilitary group, the ‘Band of brothers’. Chaplin referred to it as the ‘Unhappy few’. The joke fell flat, as the Band of brothers mushroomed in numbers, and Jefferson was able to take his own battalion of volunteers over to Belfast to fight in the Irish civil war. In contrast, Spencer produced designs for posters for the Socialist Revolutionary Party, a move that would attract the attention of Special Branch. Increasingly estranged from the British political mainstream, and attracted by the larger artistic community, in 1924, Spencer left London for Paris.
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