Meeting the Enemy (14 page)

Julia Jacobitz had nowhere to go and no close friends with whom she could stay for any length of time. Her income was limited, an amount ‘which any ordinary labourer would scarce accept as a living wage’, and she lived within a carefully mapped-out plan of expenses. Normally she could manage but these were not normal times ‘and I view with grave apprehension the possibility of the war outlasting the small saving which I am drawing upon now’.

She continued:

The Authorities have not stated what they are going to do with me, but recalling to my mind precedents and the manner in which they treated their own country’s women, I do not entertain any illusions as to the treatment I shall receive at their hands . . . Broken in health and having grown old, I do not ask any more of life than to end my days in peace.

The American Embassy enquired into Julia Jacobitz’s case but to no avail. The Chief Constable of Hampshire had ordered her removal and he proved impervious to all requests to reconsider. Julia was duly arrested for non-compliance with the order, as a letter written on behalf of the Under Secretary of State confirmed:

Miss Jacobitz received considerate treatment in being exempted from repatriation, but the grant of the further privilege of remaining at Bournemouth was within the discretion of the Chief Constable of Hampshire. The Secretary of State did not see his way in this case to interfere with the Chief Constable’s decision which follows the general practice of requiring persons of enemy nationality to remove to non-prohibited areas . . . Miss Jacobitz has been ill-advised as to refuse to leave the prohibited area and consequently was charged at the Bournemouth police court with the offence of residing there without a permit when she elected to be tried by jury and consequently she is now in the custody in Winchester Gaol . . . She is said to have made no application for bail.

The case came to court on 11 January 1916, with proceedings being reported in the
Bournemouth Guardian
. While the Court Recorder acknowledged that the defendant was no threat and that he regarded the case as one of ‘wrong-headedness’ on her part, nevertheless Julia Jacobitz ‘seemed to think that her home was her castle and that if that castle was in a prohibited area it made her entitled to live in it. Of course that was not so.’ Julia’s defence lawyer pleaded that his client subsisted on a government annuity of under £60 a year, half of which went to rent her ‘little cottage’. Giving evidence for the police, a Superintendent Hack said that Jacobitz was ‘stubborn and obstinate’ but conceded, too, that there were no grounds whatsoever to suspect the defendant and that the only reason she had been asked to move was because she was an enemy alien.

The Recorder stated that the law had to be obeyed even if it caused ‘discomfort and hardship’. Julia Jacobitz was found guilty and fined £75, which would be held over as long as she left the prohibited area within a week. In the meantime, she would have to report daily at Boscombe police station in Bournemouth.

The Foreign Office files do not contain any further material on the case. Perhaps Julia Jacobitz moved; perhaps she ended up back in Winchester gaol. On such a tight budget she could hardly have afforded the fines. The only thing that is certain is that the retired governess remained in Britain. She died of pneumonia in a Southampton hotel on 14 December 1927, aged seventy-six. Her entire estate was worth £185.

Issues concerning nationality and statehood affected men as well, and not only vicariously through their wives. Men who took citizenship of another country automatically lost their former nationality and therefore citizenship, and the rights of protection under the law granted at birth. It meant, for example, that a German-born man, raised and working in Germany, who had, for whatever reason, accepted British citizenship, would be interned in Ruhleben camp as quickly as a British-born enemy alien. But irrespective of the perverse position in which many people found themselves, it is unlikely that there were many cases as odd as that concerning an uninterned British academic and Munich University lecturer, Wilford Wells.

His story came to light when the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs received an urgent letter from a friend of Wilford Wells, Thomas Smith, a former lecturer at Erlangen University in Bavaria. In August 1914, Smith wisely chose to return to Britain but Wells, who was unmarried, remained overseas. Then, in late 1915, Smith’s attention was drawn to a short newspaper article.

I see by the
Fränkischer Kurier
[a Nuremberg newspaper] for October 29th 1915, that Mr Wells has been called up to serve in the German army. He is about 36 to 38 years of age and as he was a personal friend of mine, I am convinced that he has never taken this step of his own free will . . . [or] that he ever took out papers of naturalisation.

There was no longer an American consul in Munich, the last incumbent having been removed, Smith claimed, because of his pro-German sympathies. As a result, there was no one obvious to whom Wells could directly appeal. The Foreign Office, Smith suggested, should look into the case through the offices of the American Embassy in Berlin.

Born in September 1878, Wells left Britain for Germany in 1901, taking a position as an English lecturer at Munich University in 1906. Four years later Bavarian law changed: certain jobs, including teaching, were to be deemed government posts and attracted, for those foreigners who held them, Bavarian nationality. Both Smith and Wells knew that they were now considered Bavarian civil servants but, they believed, with only ‘complimentary citizenship and pension rights.’ ‘At the time,’ wrote Smith, ‘I enquired from the British Consul in Nuremberg whether it made any difference to my [British] nationality and he replied in the negative.’ Yet, according to Bavarian law these were not complimentary rights but full rights and, as a Bavarian subject, rights came with obligations.

Wells held a valid British passport obtained on the outbreak of war from the British vice-consul in Munich and assumed, logically, that he was ineligible for active service in the German army. In January 1915, to his surprise, he was called for a medical examination. Wells went to see the Secretary of Munich University and was informed of a two-year period of grace during which he should have given up Bavarian nationality in order to keep British citizenship. This he had failed to do. In a statement to the American vice-consul, Wells gave his side of the story:

Subsequent enquiries at the University showed that I had in fact been for two years a subject of both states, but through my neglect to apply to the British Consulate for permission to retain my British nationality beyond this time, I had lost my British nationality. I was then asked unofficially whether I should object to serving against the Russians and was confidentially assured that I should not be employed in the West. I considered the matter and said I would serve. Since 1912 I evidently have not been a British subject.

Naively, Wells never checked as to whether or not the British considered him a subject, merely accepting that the British vice-consul had made an error in giving him a passport in August 1914.

Although it transpired Wells had British nationality, he decided to enlist rather than be seen by the Bavarians as avoiding his obligations. He did not ‘wish to antagonise the German authorities’. Wilford Wells was conscripted on 2 September 1915 and took the oath of allegiance eleven days later. His army records show that he was considered ‘fully fit for active service’ and that his conduct was ‘excellent’. It is interesting to note that on his records appear the words: ‘May only be deployed on the Eastern Front’, in line with his request. After training he was sent to join his unit, the 2. Bayerische Infanterie Regiment.

‘So far as I could gather,’ wrote the American vice-consul to the British Foreign Office, ‘Mr Wells’ own attitude is that he took the military oath of allegiance voluntarily, in the sincere belief that having lost his British nationality it was his duty to do so; that under these circumstances he does not wish to take any action, or to have any action taken on his behalf.’

The British government’s response to Wells was characterised by mounting indifference. Officials concurred that it was probably useless making representations as the German army would be unlikely to let him ‘out of their clutches’ and that Wells should have acquainted himself with the laws of the country in which he resided. ‘Besides,’ wrote one official, ‘he is a queer sort of an Englishman, if he is one at all, except in name and I don’t think he is very deserving of assistance.’ In the end the Foreign Office sent a letter to Thomas Smith: ‘In the circumstances we do not propose to take any further steps in the matter.’

Wilford Wells was the youngest of four children born into a middle-class London family. He and his brother Norman attended Dulwich College in south-east London, but while Wilford sought a life in academia his elder brother followed the family tradition and set up a practice as a solicitor. It is not known how either his surviving mother or his siblings reacted to news of Wilford’s actions but an indication of Norman’s feelings may be inferred from his immediate decision to enlist.

Although just six months short of his fortieth birthday, and with three young sons of his own, in November 1915 Norman Wells applied for a commission entirely on the basis that his brother was serving in the German army. This was rejected and so he dissolved his practice and attested, being called up for service in January 1916 and posted to the 1/28th London Regiment (Artist’s Rifles) to serve as a private. Within seven weeks he had been sent overseas, serving with C Company in France, having requested an immediate posting after basic training. In August he was awarded a commission, transferring to the Army Ordnance Corps, rising to the rank of temporary captain. He remained in France until May 1919.

Wilford Wells survived the war but his wish to serve only on the Eastern Front may not have been honoured. In May 1916 he was sent to join the 3rd Company, 1st Battalion Landsturm Infantry Regiment on the Eastern Front, serving during operations near Pinsk. He soon fell ill with pleurisy and was sent to a field hospital at Cobryn (in present-day Belarus) and after convalescence returned to Munich. Then, in December 1917, he joined the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, deployed that winter to fight in Flanders, where it remained for the rest of the war. It appears that Wells may have served in Flanders until February 1918, when he returned to Munich to see out the war. Whether he was aware that his brother was on the other side of the line is unknown, nor if he ever saw or spoke to his sibling again.

Of all the incidents that inflamed Anglo-German hostility, the torpedoing of the Cunard liner RMS
Lusitania
was the most serious and had profound repercussions for Germans living in Britain. On 8 May 1915, the liner, returning from the United States, was torpedoed eleven miles off the west coast of Ireland and sank in eighteen minutes. Of 1,959 passengers on board, 1,198 drowned, including almost a hundred children. The attack on this civilian liner was portrayed in the British press as unprecedented, unwarranted and without warning. There was a public outcry, prompting furious and sustained attacks on Germans and German property across Britain.

Nowhere was anger more heartfelt than in Liverpool, which considered the
Lusitania
one of its own. The ‘Lusy’, as she was affectionately known, moored at Liverpool’s docks before each Atlantic crossing, guaranteeing that the crew, including the captain, were overwhelmingly Liverpool men. A journalist writing for
The Times
on 9 May reported the arrival of survivors at Liverpool’s Lime Street Station, some two hundred in all: there was a handful of petty officers, some engineers, stewards, trimmers and firemen. ‘Some had bandages round their heads, some were limping, and a few more seriously injured had to be carried away in motor-cabs. They all came in such clothes as they happened to have on when their ship was taken unawares . . .’

It was a pathetic scene. A noxious mix of fury and grief was inevitable. As the Union Jack was lowered to half-mast on Liverpool’s City Hall, mobs attacked German shops, with police using batons to break up rioting crowds in Everton and Birkenhead. In places crowds swelled to two or three thousand with police powerless to halt wholesale looting and burning of German premises. Incidents were not confined to Liverpool but spread across the country. In Bradford, where Germans were still employed in mills, strikes were threatened unless all enemy aliens were dismissed - such demands were quickly acceded to.

In response, prominent German-born Britons felt compelled to demonstrate their loyalty. In Bradford a deputation of just such leading citizens handed to the mayor a signed statement that underlined their repugnance at the German navy’s actions, and there were similar declarations made in Hull, Manchester and London. Others chose to write to the press. Sir Felix Semon, a naturalised British citizen of German extraction, and former physician to King Edward VII, wrote on 11 May that he had hoped that by doing his duty to his adopted country he would not need to make public an overt expression of loyalty. But, he continued, he was forced to act, hence his letter to
The Times
in which he wished it to be known that he ‘emphatically abhor[red] the barbarous methods, one and all, employed by Germany’.