1914-08-04ass

WAR NEWS

If you want to hear the latest news of the war, come around this evening to the Spectator office. Arrangements have been made for a bulletin service that will be flashed by stereopticon from the Spectator office to the Merchant’s bank across the way. By this way thousands will be able to see the bulletins who could not get close enough to the office windows. Arrangements are also being made for stereopticon slides of the celebrities in the great war drama that is now thrilling the civilized world.

Come around and be the guests of the Great Family Journal tonight.”

Hamilton Spectator.  August  03, 1914.

It was most sensational news indeed. England had yet to respond to the invasion of Belgium by declaring war of the invader Germany. If England was to be at war, so would Canada.

All day, and most of the night, the street in front of the Spectator building on James street south had been crowded with people eager to learn the latest on the war situation from the bulletins received posted on the building’s front windows. Most people, of course, could not get close enough to read the bulletins themselves so the information would be passed through the throng by word of mouth. At some points, a Spectator staff member would read, or rather shout out the news, through a megaphone so all could hear.

The news from across the ocean was so eagerly desired that the managers of the self-described Great Family Journal, the Hamilton Spectator, decided on an innovative way to share the information being received about the war.

Using the technology of the stereopticon, the Spectator arranged to have the bulletins about the war, placed on glass slides which would then be largely projected on a wall across the street.

In the Monday afternoon edition of the Spectator of August 3, 1914, it was announced that the James street vicinity of the Spectator office would be the place to be to receive the latest war news, after darkness descended.

As described in the next day’s paper, the Spectator’s innovation was well-received :

“The Spectator’ s stereopticon bulletin sheet together an enormous crowd outside the offices on James street last night – a wild, enthusiastic mob, ready to cheer anything that was British, French or Russian, and to howl and hiss at anything German or Austrian.

“And they had plenty of opportunity to do both, for in addition to a continual service of messages from London – whence all eyes are centered at this moment of supreme crisis – they were shown a number of views and portraits dealing with the principal scenes and portraits most prominently associated with the present disruption of the European nations.

“It was a wonderful crowd and they were not long in demonstrating where their sympathies lay. Germany would have short shrift at the hands of an arm composed of the men of the temperament of those who cheered and yelled and yelled outside the Spectator office last night.”¹

¹ “Hamilton Got Its News at Spec. Office : Patriotic Fervor at Height as Bulletins Flashed : Thunderous Cheering For the British Leaders : Mob Howled in Derision at Kaiser’s Picture.”

Hamilton Spectator.  August 4, 1914.

The Spectator went on to describe the scene outside their offices as in control, if wildly enthusiastic:

“Despite their noise and demonstrations, they were quite orderly – that is, as orderly as their patriotism and loyalty would allow them to be.

“There was no ‘mafficking’ – things have not reached the stage where excitement begins to rule. That stage, if indications go for anything, will come quite soon enough, but, as time slowly passes, and Britain holds the whole world in suspense, the tension grows greater and greater.

“In point of numbers, this crowd was wonderful. It was as large as any crowd which has ever gathered in the streets of Hamilton before. It began at King street and stretched along as far as Main street, and the roadway in between was packed from side to side.

“It was the expectation that the British parliament would decide last night whether or not they would declare war against Germany which attracted them for they knew that the Spectator would flash the news on the street immediately it reached Canada.

“They waited for nearly two hours, following each successive bulletin from London as it appeared with intense eagerness, but in the end they had to return home still anxious, for at 9:40 p.m. came the intimation that parliament had adjourned without any vote being taken, and that the momentous declaration for war or against it would not be made at any rate until tomorrow.

“Then the crowd began to slowly filter away, but a few hundred still remained  to read the later dispatches which were posted on the windows outside.”¹

Throughout the evening, the immense crowd had been enthralled with the nature of the event. The information from the latest bulletins placed on the big screen was interspersed with images, images which elicited loud, and varying, responses from the assembled:

“It was when the portraits and the pictures were thrown upon the screen that the huge crowd gave vent to their feelings in such a remarkable way.

“The appearance of the King and Czar, of President Poincare and the Prince of Wales brought forth loud and patriotic cheers, but perhaps the greatest ovations  were reserved for Premier Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, Winston Churchill, Lord Kitchener, Lord Charles Beresford and Sir John French, for these are the men who have the destiny of the nation in their keeping. The crowd looks to the first three of these to uphold the honor and prestige of the most famous of empires in the policy they adopt at this most portentous time; they look to the others to see that that policy is carried out on the battlefields of Europe and on the sea – carried out expeditiously and well – and to render it impossible that Germany should ever again challenge the supremacy of Britain as the leading nation of the world.

“The men who clapped their hands and cheered so loudly when these portraits were exhibited have a whole-hearted detestation of war. They realize its horrors and the sorrows it carries in its train, but they prefer that some of the best blood of the nation should be split rather than that their empire should go down to history in dishonor, and as one which violated a sacred pledge. That is why they cheered when the bulletins announced that the war party was in ascendancy, and that the peace-at-any-price party consisted merely of a little insignificant group of Radicals and Socialists, whose prototypes are to be found, happily in very small numbers, in every part of the empire.”1

In addition to the crisis in Europe, there had been a severe crisis in Ireland over the matter of Home Rule. That matter suddenly became much secondary to the war situation.  Prominent Irish politician John Redmond ‘s image on the screen drew a different reaction that what might have happened just days earlier:

“John Redmond, too, came in for a hearty round of cheers as his portrait was flashed on the screen, for the crowd had only that afternoon read in the Spectator of his announcement in the British house of commons that the troops might all be withdrawn from Ireland for the armed Catholics of the south and the armed Protestants of the north, who a week or so ago seemed on the verge of an awful conflict, would combine and defend their island against any foreign invader.

“A similar ovation greeted the portraits of Sir Edward Carson, the Ulster leader, while Canadian notables in the persons of Sir Robert Borden and Col. Sam Hughes evoked cheers as loud and as long as any.”¹

While all of the portraits mentioned above were received positively,  their was one portrait which received the strongest  reaction of all, but not a cheering response when his face hit the big screen:

“It would be impossible to imagine a louder howl than that which rent the air when a recent portrait of the Kaiser, with bristling eyebrows and hair, firce-looking moustache and a determined scowl on his face, looking for all the world like a veritable demon of war, made its appearance.

“This mass of people knew where lay the responsibility for the conflict which is now inevitable, and they did not hesitate to express their opinion of the man who had destroyed the peace of the world and set up in its place a carnival of blood and hate; nor did the kaiserin, little though in all probability she had she had to with the culminating effect of her autocratic husband’s wild and ambitious dreams, escape the contemptuous anger of the crowd, while if shouts of derision could sink battleships, those that arouse when pictures of Austria’s and Germany’s war vessels appeared would have sent the combined fleets of these two powers to the bottom of the sea without any trouble.”¹

The Spectator conclude the account of its first effort of informing Hamiltonians of the latest war news via use of a stereopticon with not a little modesty:

“It was, indeed, a wonderful occasion and the Spectator is proud of the part it played in giving the people of Hamilton an opportunity of demonstrating beyond all doubt its love and its affection for the old country, and the loyalty  of the Dominion to the empire of which it forms so bright and conspicuous a part.”¹

Just before the Spectator went to press in the morning following the stereopticon views of bulletins and portraits, members of the Hamilton Police department made an appearance at the paper’s office:

“The Spectator was notified this morning by the police that ‘certain citizens’ had complained of the crowds that assembled in front of its office to read war bulletins.

“The Spectator did not ask the police to name the citizens who had thus complained, for the very excellent reason that the police would not have imparted the information.

“There may be those who would go so far as to say that the police ‘couldn’t’ name the complaining citizens, but the Spectator is too polite and law-abiding to make any such assertion.

“What the Spectator does want to know, however, is this : What are the police and the ‘complaining citizens’ going to do about it? Events of the most tremendous importance are happening; the public is desperately interested, and is insisting on being posted. The newspapers are the only medium through which the public can get this information, and the newspapers must respond to this public appeal.

“Surely the police can find some way of placating these complaining citizens at a time like this.”²

² “The Police and War Bulletins”

Hamilton Spectator. August 4, 1914