Page 62 - WW1 - 1914

Remembering Redditch Residents & WW1 Redditch Local History Society

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Birmingham Daily Post – Tuesday 8 December 1914

Redditch – In connection with the campaign for recruiting - promoted
by the East Worcestershire Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, a public meeting was held
at the Temperance Hall, Redditch, last night. Colonel H. S. Bartleet, chairman of the Redditch
Recruiting Committee, presided.
Mr James Parker, M.P., said he was not sure the country, as a whole, had realised how
serious was the task we were engaged upon. He and others had spent their political life in
the pacificists movement working for peace, rather than preparing for war, and he admitted
that at times he had begrudged the money that was spent on armaments and had voted in
Parliament against increases in armaments. He had done so in the best of faith. He had not
believed in the possibility of war with Germany. It was he held a just war so far as Great
Britain was concerned. We were fighting for our honour and to crush militarism.

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