Capítulo 2 Marco Teórico
2.4 Estudios sobre el desarrollo moral
2.4.3 Dilemas morales en el desarrollo moral
“Send us your Children!”: For the Sake of the Children and
the Empire
1The children at an impressionable age would form associations and friendship which would strengthen the ties of the British commonwealth of nations. Their outlook would be broadened and those that returned would be imbued with new ideas and impressed with wider horizons. Those who remained would contribute to the prosperity and greatness.2
In August 1940 the Halifax Chronicle outlined the benefits that evacuating British children to Canada would bring. But how did Britain, as the Imperial mother country, come to look to her Dominion daughter as a safe haven for thousands of her children? How did Britain get to the point that sending her children to the far corners of the earth without their parents to strangers for an unknown duration, despite the costs and dangers of the ocean passage, was the better option? How the British government came to permit such an exodus, and how and why the Canadian government accepted the temporary immigration of these unaccompanied children begins to answer these questions. Similarly, the reason thousands of British parents said goodbye to their young children for an unknown duration and the motives of thousands of Canadians offering homes for evacuees further illuminates these questions. Although the simple answer is the threat of war, the factors thatled to the evacuation are much more complex. Historians who have written about the wartime overseas evacuation have oversimplified the organisation and facilitation of this transnational temporary movement of British children.3 At best, they tend to focus on the problems of establishing the Children’s Overseas Reception Board in Britain, but shy away from considering Canada’s role as host country.4
Examining
1 Canada. Debates of the Sentate (Hansard), “For the Sake of the Children: A Report of the Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access”, December 1998, 36th Parliament, 1st Session.
2 “Value of Evacuating Children from England is Stressed”, Halifax Chronicle, August 28, 1940. 3 Martin Parsons, Carlton Jackson and Penny Starns for instance have all discussed the “hot-cold” establishment of CORB but have not looked in depth at how Canada responded to this process. 4 Fethney in The Absurd and the Brave discusses the awkward formation CORB and facilitation of the government overseas evacuation scheme from the British perspective. Such a discussion is absent from Geoffrey Bilson’s The Guest Children.
Canada’s role reveals the ways in which Canada exercised its own authority in relation to CORB and the establishment of Canadian evacuation guidelines.5 It reveals that Canada did not wait passively nor silently for Britain to call on her Imperial daughter. Canadians were motivated not only by humanitarianism and philanthropy but by Imperial
connections to the Old Country. The process of turning offers of care for children into the reality of playing host to thousands of evacuees was complex, confusing, and highly contentious in both Britain and Canada. Canada simultaneously exercised its Imperial duty and patriotic pride in its efforts to bring evacuees to Canada.
The concept of civilian evacuation was rooted in the early twentieth century. In North Carolina in December 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright succeeded in the world’s first powered, controlled, and piloted flight. Newspapers across America marked the achievement with headlines such as “Flying Machine Soars” and “Flying Machine Sustains Itself: Experiment at Kitty Hawk Pronounced a Success”.6 The Wright brothers’ success marked a new age in which man could rise above the earth. Within a few years, aviation was a wonder of fascination and garnered public interest, particularly in Europe. In 1909, the British newspaper the Daily Mail goaded brave pilots into testing the limits of their inventions with a competition to cross the English Channel in a “machine heavier than air”.7
On July 25, Frenchman Louis Blériot successfully landed on the coast at Dover after flying from Calais. The front page of the the Daily Mirror on July 27 ran a full-page photograph of large crowds at Victoria Station with the caption: “M. Louis Blériot, the aviator, who wrote a new page of history on Sunday, arrived in London yesterday to receive the £1,000 prize offered by the Daily Mail to the first man to cross
5 CORB also had to co-operate with the Dominion governments in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. There have been no comprehensive studies on other Dominions that received British evacuees. 6 “Flying Machine Soars”, Chicago Daily Tribune, December 19 1903. “Flying Machine Sustains Itself: Experiment at Kitty Hawk Pronounced a Success”, Morning Post, December 19, 1903.
7 The competition captured such interest that crowds formed at Dover to watch for any arrivals. Hubert Latham was the first to attempt the crossing but on both attempts crashed into the Channel. “The Cross- Channel Flight: Scenes at Dover”, Daily Mirror, July 12 1909. “Mr. Latham lights a Cigarette After Falling into the Channel”, Daily Mirror, July 21, 1909.
the English Channel in a machine heavier than air”.8
The significance of the Channel crossing went beyond fame and fortune; the flight signalled the fact that the distance separating Britain from Europe could be more quickly and easily conquered. Alfred Gollin captures this sentiment in his book No Longer an Island (1984). Although the technology was still limited, the idea that Britain could be reached, or worse, attacked, by air was deeply frightening. The nation’s once greatest shield, the Royal Navy, could provide little protection. Gollin opens with a view of negotiations between the British government and the Wright brothers for the potential purchase of their plane. It was clear by 1909 that aviation could be harnessed for strategic and military use.9
Futurists proclaimed the risks that aviation would pose to civilians in conflict. In response to this fear, British newspapers ran headlines such as “Prepared for Aerial War: Britain’s Fleet of Airships Being Formed” in January 1913.10 The outbreak of the First
World War in 1914 confirmed futurist perspectives. Both British and German forces came to utilise airplanes for reconnaissance over the Western front and dogfights came to fill the skies with now famous flying-aces such as Canada’s Billy Bishop and Germany’s Manfred von Richthofen, also known as the “Red Baron”.11
It was on Christmas Eve of 1914 that the German air service unleashed its first bombs on British soil, although they caused no significant damage.12 The Germans then used their long-range dirigibles to bomb East London and cities like Hull.13 In September 1916, Patrick Blundstone, a schoolboy who was staying with a family in Hertfordshire, wrote a letter to his father in London describing the sight of a crashed Zeppelin: “we saw flashes and then heard ‘bangs’ + ‘pops’. Suddenly a bright yellow light appeared + died down again”. They all
8 M. Louis Blériot made the journey with his monoplane. “London’s Welcome to M. Bleriot: Cheering the Intrepid Aviator as He Leaves Victoria”, Daily Mirror, July 27, 1909.
9 Alfred Gollin, No Longer an Island, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). “Did the government make them an offer for their Aeroplanes? The Wright Brothers Leaving the War office Yesterday”, Daily Mirror, May 4, 1909.
10 “Prepared for Aerial War: Britain’s Fleet of Airships Being Formed”, Daily Express, January 21, 1913. 11 Jonathan Vance notes that during the war, the British captured half a million aerial photographs, which would be used to trace the enemy’s position. Jonathan Vance, “Soon shall the sky be ours” in High Flight (Toronto: Penguin, 2002), 45. See chapter for more on First World War and battlefield aviation.
12 Ibid, 61.
rushed to the window and Patrick described “there right above us was the Zepp! It had broken in half…it was in flames, roaring, and crackling…It was about 100 yards away from the house and directly opposite us!!!” Although he noted that he would rather not describe the state of the crew, Patrick noted “of course, they were all dead – burnt to death. They were roasted, there is absolutely no other word for it. They were brown, like the outside of Roast beef. One had his legs off at the knees, and you could see the
joint!”14 It is unknown if Patrick was sent to Hertfordshire by his parents in case London
was bombed, but regardless the inaccuracy of the Zeppelin put Hertfordshire just as much at risk. Even if potentially in danger, Patrick’s perspective as a child was more focused on the delight and fascination of the sight of the “Zepp” going down.15
Some parents, possibly like Patrick Blundstone’s, sent their children away from London. John Bowlby, who went on to become a distinguished child psychiatrist, was placed in a boarding school in the country as protection.16 Such considerations for the safety of Britain’s children began to take on some official status.17
Stefan Goebel’s chapter on London schools in Capital Cities at War (2012) illustrates the anxiety of teachers and parents to protect the children. By 1917, safety precautions were taken by the Board of Education stating that during an air raid warning, children on the top floor of a school had to be moved and distributed throughout lower floors.18 Teachers had to cope with anxious children who, as described in numerous school reports, suffered from
14 Imperial War Museum (IWM), Documents 5508, “Patrick Blundstone Private Papers”.
15 The fascination with such a sight is similar to that which Amy Bell finds in London Was Ours during the Blitz.
16 Jerry White in Zeppelin Nights suggests that this experience influenced psychologist John Bowlby to later establish the “Attachment Theory” and write about maternal deprivation. Jerry White, Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War (London: Bodley Head. 2014).
17 In a similar vein of recognising their plight, in 1915 Britain allowed a number of Belgian refugee children into the country. An article in the Times ran with the title “A School Entente: Belgians and British Side by Side” on March 18, 1915 as it reported that “English school children have given to their younger brothers and sisters from Belgium as sincere a welcome as the grown-ups have accorded”.17 For more on the reception and care provided for these children see: Katherine Storr, “Belgian Children’s Education in Britain in the Great War” History of Education Researcher no 72 (2003), Kevin Myers, “The Hidden History of Refugee Schooling in Britain: The Case of the Belgians, 1914-1918”, History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001).
18 Stefan Goebel, “Schools” in Capital Cities at War Vol.2 Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 224.
nervous tension that resulted in their reduced receptiveness and retentiveness.19 In the same year, the Germans began using Gotha twin-engine bombers. The first raid was on May 25, 1917 on Folkestone where British troops set sail for France. Ninety-five people were killed and almost 200 were injured. Back in London 160 people perished, of whom fifteen were children, when a bomb hit the Upper North Street School in Poplar.20 By Zeppelins or bombers, such German attacks enraged a British population that was utterly horrified by the German display of ‘barbarianism’. Susan Grayzel in At Home and Under Fire (2012) argues that the casualties led to widespread newspaper coverage and inquests which framed the attacks as ‘immoral’ and ‘illegitimate’; the aviators were ‘baby-
killers’.21 Many of these stories reported the horrific deaths of innocent children such as
three-year-old Elsie Lilian Leggett who died from suffocation and burns as the “bomb crashed right through the children’s bed.”22
Jonathan Vance in High Flight argues that such outrage even made it into Canadian newspapers with headlines such as “Resume Murder of Tots” and “Nursery a Slaughterhouse after the Zeppelin Raid”.23
Despite the better accuracy and greater success of the Gotha raids, it is the Zeppelin attacks that have come to be associated with the First World War. Amy Bell in her article “Landscapes of Fear” quotes 557 deaths (and almost twice as many injuries) as the result of Zeppelins in the war and argues that the dirigible proved Britain’s military vulnerability.24 Nonetheless, between 1914 and 1918 the British government recorded 1,239 deaths (366 women and 252 children) and 2,886 injuries (1,016 women and 542 children).25 The aerial bombardment unleashed upon Britain in the Second World War has come to overshadow damage from bombs in the First World War. Londoners during
19 Stefan Goebel, “Schools” in Capital Cities at War Vol.2 Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 223.
20 Vance, High Flight, 62-63.
21 Susan Grayzel, “‘Destroying the Innocent’ The Arrival of the Air Raid, 1914-1916” in At Home and Under Fire, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
22 “Death of a Child”, Times, 2 June 1915. Quoted in Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire (2012). 23 Vance, High Flight, 64.
24 Amy Bell, “Landscapes of Fear: Wartime London, 1939-1945”, The Journal of British Studies, 48, no. (2009):157.
25 Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire, 21. Titmuss notes that air raids caused 1,413 deaths and 4,820. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy, 4.
the First World War had even started sheltering in London’s tube stations, particularly during one night in February 1918 when an estimated 750,000 Londoners went
underground.26 That Zeppelins silently cruised over the English Channel and bombers dropped bombs unannounced became a source of anxiety and psychological unease. The “landscape of fear” that Amy Bell maps for the Second World War was already in place in the First World War. Overall, damage and deaths were relatively low and such
bombings failed to bring decisive success for the Germans. Yet, the Great War, as it was known, illustrated that twentieth-century warfare would increasingly utilise modern technology. The English Channel would no longer protect Britain from her European enemies. Britons feared a war that would be fought in their towns and cities rather than in distant lands. London, the great Imperial city of the nineteenth century, had become a military target of the twentieth century.27
This fear only deepened in the 1920s and 1930s. Using British civilian deaths between 1914-1918, Air Staff estimates concluded that if war came again, an air attack would result in a minimum of 50 casualties for each ton of bombs dropped.28 Even in the post-war period, for those who experienced Zeppelin or Gotha raids, there was a fear that similar attacks could strike again, or worse. For others, the fear of the unknown was no more comforting. In the interwar period, non-combatant civilians recounted their
experiences in autobiographies and memoirs, utilising the literary outlets to point towards their role and participation in the war. Grayzel argues that within such works “the
previous war’s air raids…provided the foundation for anxious visions of what the next war would be like – a massive civilian death wrought from the sky.” The cultural
groundwork laid by interwar representations of air war, as Grayzel argues, helped both to scare and to prepare the population.29
British government officials by no means dismissed such alarmist futurist thoughts and a mere six years after the end of the Great War, sought ways to protect its
26 Philip Ziegler, London at War (New York: Knopf, 1995), 10. 27 Bell, Landscapes of Fear, 157.
28 Titmus, Problems of Social Policy, 3. 29 Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire, 120.
civilians in the event of another war. In 1924, the Committee of Imperial Defence Sub- Committee on Air Raids Precautions (ARP) was created and chaired by Sir John Anderson to discuss practical, psychological, and cultural means of defence.30 The Air Raid Precaution Committee predicted that 100 tons of bombs would fall on London in the first twenty-four hours of war and seventy-five tons in the following twenty-four hours.31 Furthermore, the committee argued that an attack would likely be focused on London and the enemy would utilise widespread bombing rather than specific targeting to attack British morale.32 The sub-committee published a report on April 17, 1931 estimating that if war was launched against London, within the first six days of aerial bombardment causalities would total 18,750 (with 6,375 of those resulting in deaths), and would cause significant disruptions in transportation and gas, petrol, and electricity supplies.33 In 1937, the British government sought to prepare the public for war through the enactment of the Air Raid Precautions Act in hopes of avoiding panic if a surprise attack was launched on Britain.34 A group of psychiatrists even reported to the Ministry of Health that the population would be stricken with “varying degrees of neurosis and panic”.35
Thousands of psychological casualties were expected for each day of bombing in
London.36 The bombing of the spiritual capital of the Basque people, Guernica, on April 26, 1937 by German and Italian Fascists during the Spanish Civil War fueled this fear and illustrated the horrors of this new aerial warfare. Once again, images of dead children were used as evidence of German barbarity. A famous poster from the Ministerio de Propaganda printed in English for British consumption showed a photograph of a dead
30 Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire, 123. 31 Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy, 5.
32 T. H. O’Brien, Civil Defence (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1955): 16-26.
33 TNA, Cab 46/23, Evacuation sub-committee report, April 17, 1931. For more, see Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire, 141.
34 See Grayzel, “Preparing the Public for the Next War”, in At Home and Under Fire, 200-223.
35 Geoffrey Field, “Nights Underground in Darkest London: The Blitz, 1940-1941” Cercles 17 (2007): 183. 36 As quoted in Amy Bell, “Landscapes of Fear”, 156.
girl and warned “Madrid, if you tolerate this your children will be next”.37
The message was just as clear for Britons.
Amongst this pre-war alarmism was a growing concern for the nation’s youth. Not only had the bombings of the previous war advanced the plight of children but the war also showed the extent to which children were needed for the continuance of the race. Deborah Dwork in War is Good for Babies argues that the Second World War (much like the Boer War) illustrated the need for healthy, strong children to continue the future of the race and therefore their health and survival was brought into the national consciousness. 38 Hugh Cunningham in Children and Childhood argues that between 1500 and 1900, ideas and concepts of childhood were fluid.39 Perspectives on what a child’s life should entail were not only dependent upon time but also on geography, gender, and class. Although “childhood” has always existed as a biological phase of life, it increasingly became shaped by views of labour and contributing to the family income, access to education, and even parental affection.40 By the end of the industrial revolution in Britain, according to Jane Humphries, child labour was widespread. For those children, childhood was often defined by their contribution to the family economy. Child labour, however, was in decline by the mid-nineteenth century.41 “Childhood” as a period in one’s life that should be carefree and protected became an increasingly prominent social