Poem ~ Selling Recruitment - Tuesday, 18 May 1915

Source: File: Navy Recruiting Poster.jpg, 2015. From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. [online] Available at: <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Navy_recruiting_poster_1915_LOC_cph.3g10962.jpg> [Accessed: 18 May 2015].

With war innovations made,

Came a novel method by way

Of recruitment for Naval Division,

Via a shop selling recruitment.

The Earl of Iveagh, Captain

Rupert Guinness, hit on thought

To utilises high street windows,

Like any shop, to attract recruits.

At 112 Strand, near the river

Thames, crowds could be seen

Gazing into decorated windows -

So what of the purchasers?

In selling the attraction of Navy,

Were recent battle trophies - such

As a German 6in shell of October
1914, having fallen on Antwerp.

Attraction of window watchers

Do not necessarily make buyers -

But within the first week was brisk

Business for feet over threshold.

A picklehaube had centre stage,

Stated as been on head of a savage

German - about which arrangements

Of posters and topical photographs.

Models and pictures of the fronts,

All show how naval division played

Their role, in doing their bit - all set

Out to appeal to potential recruits.

One poster stated, ‘if you don’t

See what you want in the window

Come inside' - while the looker looks,

An alert recruiter watches their gaze.

He says 'wont you come and join us?’

'Better to do so now you’ll only be

Roped in later on.’ A Sergeant gives

Such whispers to potential 'buyers.'

With an instinct of a shopkeeper,
Commander Guinness sells forces

Keen banter, in tales of the wares;

'Book Here for the Dardanelles.’

Such trade having risen, with previous

Average numbers of twenty recruits

Reaching over a hundred – attraction

Of a sellers window had worked well.

 by Jamie Mann.

Anon.,1915. Novel Recruiting Methods. The Daily Telegraph, [online] 18 May. P.3. Col.3. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/11608860/Daily-Telegraph-May-18-1915.html [Accessed: 18 May 2015].

Mann, J., 2015. 100 years Ago - Poems by Jamie Mann. [letter] (Personal communication, 18 May 2015). 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/11608860/Daily-Telegraph-May-18-1915.html

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