Entertaining the Troops in France

From the Huddersfield  Daily Examiner, 25th October 1916.

MISS LENA ASHWELL ON HER CONCERT EXPERIENCES IN FRANCE.

WHAT THE SOLDIERS WANT.

A meeting of the Huddersfield and District Women's Committee for Soldiers and Sailors, held at the Town Hall, yesterday afternoon, was addressed by Miss Lena Ashwell on her experiences with her concert parties in France.

The Mayoress (Mrs. Blamires), who presided, announced particulars of a forthcoming bazaar, a “Harrods Store and Covent Garden combined,” in aid of the funds of the committee.

Miss N. Lowe (treasurer) said that since the formation of the society they had received monetary gifts totalling £8,216, of which £3,526 had been raised by the Mayoress's Comforts Fund.  The expenditure amounted to £8,297, leaving a deficit of £81.

Mrs. Marshall (secretary) presented a report reviewing the work of the committee since its foundation.  Over 44,000 socks and 2,180 dressing gowns and a grand total of 199,647 articles had been sent out. (Applause.) They had received gifts of articles to the value of £8,098. The bandage room had supplied 43,894 bandages and pneumonia jackets, and the slipper department, which was started at Lindley had sent out 1,450 slippers. 10,703 shirts, 9,456 mufflers, and over 8,000 mittens had also been sent out.  Those figures, colossal as they were, did not represent the whole of the work that had been done, as so many districts were sending out their work themselves. (Applause.)
Brief reports were also given by Mrs. L. Demetriadi.

Miss L. Ashwell said that she at first had desired that the work of entertaining our troops in France should be done nationally.  But there was a tremendous prejudice against artists—the road that they must travel was felt to be very dangerous, and some people feared that when the artist came there was going to be trouble.  So the doors of the War Office were closed against her, and she despaired of ever sending out parties until she received an invitation to do so through the women's auxiliary of the Y.M.C.A.  The first party arrived in France early in February, 1915, and they were now sending out three parties per month.  The parties usually consisted of seven artists—a soprano, a contralto, a tenor, a bass, a violinist or a ‘celloist, an entertainer, and an accompanist.  Three concerts a day were given–one in the hospital at three in the afternoon and two in a camp, beginning at 5-30 and ending about 9-30.

GARDENS AND GOOD MUSIC. 

People at home had no conception of the horror, of the intense despair of it all; it made them laugh with pride, and then to curse at the horror of the thing, to see fine men going up to the line, and battered wrecks coming down.  Yet—the splendour of it!—the men marched up to the line with a laugh.  When did the Englishman go anywhere but with a smile?  Their laugh was not a silly laugh: it was a keenly intelligent laugh.  The English-man over there didn't want rot.  Anybody who said that the masses wanted the lowest class of amusement and did not want education was a liar. (Applause.) The men wanted only the very best.  She had taken to the soldiers “'Macbeth,” in spite of those who had prophesied disaster, and there could not have been a more keenly interested audience.  One could have heard a pin drop.  She had also played “The Twelve-Pound Look,” by Sir James Barrie.  A little serious, perhaps a little above the average intelligence, they might say, but her audience, composed of transport workers, saw every point, saw every subtlety, as well as any West End audience in London.  And everywhere they went they found gardens.  She had seen sweet peas growing beautifully where there seemed nothing but cinders and dust.  The soldier was extraordinarily successful in creating beautiful gardens where one would have thought nothing could grow—and where nothing could grow he would make beautiful patterns on the ground by means of coloured glass or painted stones.  Everywhere there was a real love of flowers, and a real inherent sense of beauty which was not generally supposed to be characteristic of the workers of this great nation.  She had been told by more than one commanding officer that there were more volunteers to return to the line after a visit to a base hospital by a concert party.  No medicine, no drug, did so much good as a concert party in giving back the men their bravery.  The soldier loved the violin, he adored the 'cello; he liked duets from opera, he was fond of the old ballads, and he loved Bach and Handel.  Could they realise what a concert, a few hours of normal life, meant to these men, after months and months of the sight of nothing but desolation and horror?  A few moments of beauty did so much, because beauty could always wipe out evil, and misery could always be kept away by healthy laughter.

BACK TO THE OLD STYLE SCENERY. 

Their theatres were sometimes rather crude.  She had played on a stage composed of tables; she had played “Macbeth” with a soap box as the grand throne in the hall of the Castle of Dunsinane, and Red Cross screens as scenery.  (Laughter.) But the thing was that it did all right; there was the soap box, they pretended it was a throne, and from that time it was a throne; there were screens, and they could easily pretend that there was a corridor.  It worked excellently, because her audience were intelligent, vital human beings, who needed entertainment, who had been starved of beauty. The most wonderful thing in the world was to hear the men cheer their thanks, and to see them marching to the line.  It was because they had thrown their whole lives into their task.  There was something more terrible than death, and that was to fail to live up to their ideals.

Concluding, she appealed for continued support.  They could not, she said, take any entertainment with a clear conscience, unless they had sent something for the entertainment of the men over there.  They had all hoped that there would not be another winter campaign, and the next winter would be the hardest of all.  It was the morale, the heart behind, that won the battle, and she wanted more concert parties to keep up their hearts.  She instanced how two men, one a doctor and the other a padre, had thanked her—by crying.  Their gratitude was so great and they had felt so deeply the necessity of music, of art, and of beauty. (Loud applause.)