British Army

The British Army is a recurring force in A Woman of Substance, linking national mobilization to the private lives of the Harte and Fairley families. Its wartime demands change from voluntary recruitment to compulsory service, take sons and friends away from home, and redirect industrial production toward uniforms. Through enlistment, battle, and evacuation, the novel presents military service not as an abstraction but as a pressure on family loyalty, business, and survival.

Military demand and recruitment

At the beginning of the First World War, the Army’s need for soldiers is discussed against the limits of Britain’s existing forces. Adam Fairley observes that the Territorial Army is small and that the country has no compulsory draft system. Recruitment must therefore depend on volunteers, generally unmarried men aged eighteen to thirty. The prospect of a campaign to enlist them unsettles Jocelyn, who had not considered that he might be called upon to serve. The discussion makes clear that, at first, the Army’s expansion depends on persuasion and voluntary commitment rather than universal obligation.

Lord Kitchener’s appointment as Secretary of State for War marks a decisive change in scale. Adam regards Kitchener as more than a military figure: he is a national symbol of success whose public standing can help raise morale. Kitchener’s first appeal brings in one hundred thousand volunteers, while the government prepares to build new armies. The novel sets this rapid mobilization beside the terrible cost that follows: from August 1914 into 1915, fighting in France and Belgium kills hundreds of thousands of young men. Recruitment figures and battlefield losses thus belong to the same unfolding process.

Enlistment and the turn to conscription

The Army’s recruitment drive enters the Fairley household when Edwin tells Adam that he has decided to enlist immediately. Adam urges caution, hoping his son will wait for further news, but Edwin insists that he must go. The decision has already become irreversible: he enlisted in Leeds that afternoon and must report on Monday. Adam’s distress is sharpened by the knowledge that the government’s appeal is directed at single men, but his concern cannot undo his son’s choice.

The voluntary system soon proves insufficient. As casualties mount, Prime Minister Henry Asquith introduces a bill on January 4, 1916, requiring fit single men to undertake military service. The measure faces strong opposition from defenders of the old voluntary system, yet it passes its third reading on January 24 by 347 votes to 36 and comes into force on March 2. At first its reach is limited to single men. Emma Harte Lowther follows the news closely and anticipates that the shortage of soldiers will bring married men into the scope of service as well. The legislation makes the Army’s demand a direct concern for households beyond those who have volunteered.

For Emma, the administrative efficiency she had once resented becomes a source of dread. David goes first, serving with the infantry; Joe Lowther and Blackie O’Neill follow. At the end of May, Joe and Blackie join the Seaforth Highlanders, the regiment once associated with Emma’s father. Blackie jokes about the incongruity of an Irishman living in England, married to an Englishwoman, and serving in a Scottish regiment, but the laughter does not lift the women’s apprehension. Joe and Blackie are sent to Ripon for field training. After two weeks they return home for a twenty-four-hour leave before embarking for France from Tilbury.

Their departure gives the Army’s expansion a human measure. On a damp June morning, Emma accompanies the two men to the railway station; Laura, pregnant and wanting to go too, is persuaded not to. As the train pulls away, Emma waves until it disappears, then leaves through the crowd in tears, fearing she may never see either man again. The enlistment system has converted a national emergency into an intimate separation, with the railway journey serving as the threshold between home and the front.

The Army at the front and in the war economy

The novel evokes the western front through the advance of the 51st Division of the Seaforth Highlanders toward Trônes Wood. Under shellfire, the soldiers cross mud and fields torn by bombardment, with trenches and wire entanglements marking the ground ahead. Their objective lies within a landscape of named villages and railway lines, and the German defences include machine guns and protected positions. The Army’s movement is shown as a coordinated advance through exposed terrain, but the scene’s emphasis remains on the physical peril of crossing a shattered battlefield.

Military necessity also reshapes the home front. Emma recognizes that war will make merchandise scarce as manufacturers redirect factories toward government supplies, including uniforms. Rather than treating the stocks in her warehouse as a liability, she sees them as reserves she can use in her store if ordinary supply fails. Later, her businesses meet wartime demand directly: Layton’s mill fills government contracts, while the clothing factory turns its production over to uniforms and suspends the Lady Hamilton line. The Army’s need for clothing therefore reaches from the front into Emma’s decisions about inventory, labor, and production.

That commercial response is not presented as detached from the human cost. Emma knows that her family life is being crowded out by work, yet she believes she has no choice but to keep the businesses operating. She reasons that uniforms must be made by someone, while the mills of Yorkshire produce cloth for British and Allied forces. The Army’s requirements thus sustain industrial activity even as they draw the people Emma loves into danger; the same war that creates contracts also empties homes.

Service, injury, and survival

The Army’s effects persist after combat. Winston Harte’s injury leaves open the possibility that he may not be able to wear an artificial limb. Emma refuses to accept a future in which her brother is confined to crutches or a wheelchair, and declares that he will walk even if she has to design a special leg herself. His recovery is difficult: he swings between relief, depression, anger, frustration, and self-pity. Emma uses every means she can to challenge his despair and sustain his belief that he can lead a normal life.

Winston is treated at the Chapel Allerton Limb Fitting Centre in Leeds, where doctors work to make injured servicemen mobile as quickly as possible. Within two months he is moving on crutches; he is fitted with an artificial leg despite the shortness of his stump, with extra stump socks cushioning it against the metal. He then lives with Emma during his recuperation and travels by Harte’s van to the hospital three times a week for physical therapy. The account extends the Army’s story beyond enlistment and battle to the prolonged work of rehabilitation, in which family care and medical treatment help determine what survival will mean.

The Second World War and renewed mobilization

A new generation faces military service during the Second World War. After Paul McGill’s death, Emma is already grieving when the European crisis further taxes her strength. Her sons enter the forces: Kit enlists in the Army, while Robin joins the Royal Air Force. Their different services make clear that the family’s exposure to war is not confined to a single branch, even though the Army remains central to the danger faced by Emma’s sons.

The evacuation from Dunkirk brings that danger briefly into view as survival. Over eleven days, 340,000 Allied troops are rescued before the Germans capture the French port; about 40,000, mostly French, are left behind. Kit returns across the Channel and comes ashore at Deal after being carried there by barge. When he later comes home on leave, he tells Emma that he made it by the skin of his teeth. She clings to him, remembering Joe, who died in France in 1916, and the fear that his death may have been in vain. In this sequence, military withdrawal and rescue are inseparable from personal relief and bereavement.

The Army’s place in the novel is consequently defined by more than its campaigns. It recruits and conscripts, takes men from their families, gives industrial production a new purpose, and leaves the injured to rebuild their lives. The return of war in the next generation repeats the pressure without erasing the earlier losses: each mobilization arrives as a national necessity and is experienced at home as separation, uncertainty, and the fragile possibility of return.