BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [16 NOV. 1917]
BRACERS 19245. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
Friday1^, 2^, 3

My Beloved

Yes it was a wonderful day yesterday4 — it had great quality. It was dreadful parting from you — it always is —

Sunday: Pad. dp. 10.5 for Maidenhead
Bourne End dp 3.11 Pad. arr 4.55

There is no other train from Bourne End available.

Fearful excitements in pacifist world about the new D of R Regulation.5 Mildness is the order of the day.

CEM6 and Hunter7 stand out for boldness, but no one seems to agree with them.

Northcliffe’s letter to Ll. G.8 very exciting. All to the good.

If you want any change about Sunday please telephone tomorrow morning. I shall be out in the afternoon, speaking at Enfield.9 If I don’t, hear, I will call for you at 9.30. Goodnight my lovely Darling.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200233.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 6 Mecklenburgh Square | W.C. Pmk: LONDON WC | 8.15 PM | 16 NOV 17?

• 3

  [date] Colette wrote “16 Nov 1917” on the letter.

• 4

  wonderful day yesterday They had taken the train to Windsor, walked to Virginia Water, and then taken the train from there back to London.

• 5

  new D of R Regulation The new Defence of the Realm regulation (27c) “made it unlawful to issue or distribute any leaflet, pamphlet or circular relating to the present war or to the making of peace, without first obtaining the consent for the Censor” (BR, “The New Dictatorship of Opinion”, 82 in Papers 14). Proposed by Sir George Cave, the regulation was accepted by Cabinet on 15 November 1917.

• 6

  CEM Catherine Marshall (1880–1961). For further information on her, see BRACERS 19043, n.5.

• 7

  Hunter Ernest E. Hunter, secretary of the No-Conscription Fellowship and the C.O. whom BR defended in Two Years’ Hard Labour for Refusing to Disobey the Dictates of Conscience.

• 8

  Northcliffe’s letter to Ll. G. Alfred Charles Harmsworth (1865–1922), from 1905 1st Baron Northcliffe and from 1917 1st Viscount Northcliffe. By 1914 his enterprises included The Daily Mail with its extensive circulation, the internationally respected The Times, as well as The Observer, an influential weekly edited by J. L. Garvin. Northcliffe championed imperialism, Germanophobia, and conscription. In 1917 he was appointed head of the British War Mission in the United States. It was from there that he wrote to Lloyd George, declining his invitation to take charge of the new Air Ministry (“The Air Ministry”, The Times, 16 Nov. 1917, p. 7).

• 9

  speaking at Enfield Enfield, north London, had a branch of the NCF. The noted, lifelong pacifist H. Ronham Brown, chair of the branch, had been convicted in 1916 for spreading reports likely to prejudice recruiting. His case was repeatedly written up in The Tribunal. Thus BR would have known of the Enfield branch.