Francis Vane
Francis Patrick Fletcher Vane, the only son of Frederick Henry Fletcher Vane and his wife, Rosa Linda Moore Vane, was born on 16 October 1861 in Dublin. The family claimed descent from Sir Henry Vane, knighted at the battle of Poitiers in 1356, and the baronetcy was created in 1786. (1)
Vane grew up in Sidmouth, Devon, and was educated at the Misses Hills' preparatory school, Cheltenham, where he was "lonely, miserable, and terribly homesick" and briefly at Charterhouse School (1873–4), where he was bullied and unhappy. (2)
Vane wanted to become a soldier and studied at Oxford Military College, Cowley (January 1876 to December 1877), a private military school preparing for Woolwich and Sandhurst entrance and militia examinations. He entered the regular army in October 1878 he was commissioned lieutenant in the 3rd battalion, Worcestershire regiment. (3) He was "enormously proud" of his uniform, and one of "a pretty wild lot". (4)
In August 1882 he transferred to the 2nd battalion, Scots Guards. Once again he experienced bullying and resigned his commission and in 1886 was a resident at Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel. It was "a residential colony of educated men in the slums intended to serve both as centres of education, recreation, and community life for the local poor and as outposts for social work, social scientific investigation, and cross-class friendships between élites and their poor neighbours." Jane Addams visited Toynbee Hall in 1888: "It is a community for University men who live there, have their recreation and clubs and society all among the poor people, yet in the same style they would live in their own circle." (5)
Francis Vane married Anna Oliphant da Costa Ricci, third daughter of Baron da Costa Ricci, of the Portuguese legation, on 15 December 1888. He was involved in the Anglo-Siberian Trading Syndicate and in 1891 became a member of Lloyds. "Proud of his lineage and family baronetcy, and enthusiastic for genealogy and heraldry, he established with others the Honourable Society of the Baronetage (1898), to purify the baronetage of false claimants." (6)
Francis Vane and British Army
In 1899 Vane offered his services for the Boer War. As he explained later "being of a soldier race, and trained as such, no other action was possible for me". (7) In January 1900 he was appointed captain in a militia unit, the 3rd battalion, King's Own (Royal Lancaster regiment). He served in South Africa from 1900 to 1902, with intervals of home sick leave. He was a cavalry transport officer, and judge of a military court in Western District, Cape Colony, commanded a small column in Cape Colony. (8)
Vane became convinced of the need to conciliate the Boers. He returned to England in 1902, and his belief in reconciliation and his criticism of aspects of British conduct of the war. This included the establishment of concentration camps and especially disliked farm burning, which he considered "useless and inexcusable". (9)
Vane's criticism of the behaviour of the British army in South Africa brought him into contact with anti-war members of the Liberal Party. He praised the work of Emily Hobhouse who had reported on the concentration camps in 1901: "The new scorched-earth policy of the military authorities during March and April, brought a large number of extra families into the camps which resulted in a considerable increase in their population. In many instances I was an eyewitness of what took place. I saw families huddled up close to the railway line near Warrenton and Fourteen Streams; I saw an overcrowded train crawling along to Kimberley throughout a whole long night; I saw people, old and young, bundled in open trucks under a scorching sun near a station building without anything to eat. At midnight they were transported to empty tents where they groped about in the dark, looking for their little bundles. They went to sleep without any provision having been made for them and without anything to eat or to drink. I saw crowds of them along railway lines in bitterly cold weather, in pouring rain - hungry, sick, dying and dead. I never had any doubt that every female countryman of mine would feel just as I did at the sight of all this - with a profound feeling of compassion, burning with the desire to alleviate the suffering." (10)
In 1902 Francis Vane returned to South Africa as a journalist for the Daily News and other Liberal publications. In 1905 he published Pax Britannica in South Africa. Sympathetic to the Boers, urging reconciliation, and unsympathetic to the blacks, it criticized British destruction and looting but, while regretting the mortality in the concentration camps, claimed that there was "no intentional cruelty". (11)
In the 1906 General Election he was the Liberal Party candidate the Burton upon Trent division of Staffordshire, where he lost to the Liberal Unionist, Robert Ratcliff, a brewer (4,572 to 5,613). Vane was subsequently prospective Liberal parliamentary candidate for the Cockermouth division of Cumberland. He supported compulsory military training, as advocated by Field Marshall Frederick Roberts, but opposed the idea of conscription. (12)
In June 1908, following the death of his cousin Sir Henry Ralph Fletcher Vane, fourth baronet, he inherited the baronetcy and property. However, this did not enrich him because of litigation in the 1860s between his father and Sir Henry, disputing who was the rightful heir, had cost about £50,000 and left the estate heavily in debt. Vane alleged that this consequence had been "really caused by the lawyers on both sides". (13)
Boy Scouts
Robert Baden-Powell published his book, Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship in 1908. In 1910 Baden-Powell retired from the army and formed The Scout Association. Vane, who since his time at Toynbee Hall, had been interested in the organization of boy cadets. Vane emphasized its peaceful, civilian potential, denying that it was military, and gained support for it from prominentQuakers. (14) He distrusted the "militarist clique around Baden Powell" and wanted a more democratic structure. (15)
Vane warned Baden-Powell of the "suspicion and dislike" of headquarters by "a very large proportion of active men" in the organization (16). The conflict between Vane and headquarters was partly personality clash and partly power struggle. Baden-Powell was determined to retain control of the movement but was indecisive and reluctant to act against Vane. Under pressure at headquarters from Major-General Sir Edmond Roche Elles, the chief commissioner, who threatened resignation, Baden-Powell dismissed Vane in November 1909. (17)
In December 1909 he accepted an invitation to be president of the British Boy Scouts (BBS), which had grown out of the Battersea Boy Scouts' secession from Baden-Powell's organization in May 1909 and was backed by Cassell's popular boys' weekly Chums. In November 1911 he founded the Order of World Scouts and became its first grand scoutmaster. In an article in The Truth he warned about the use of the Boy Scouts to develop nationalism: "We base our work on the fact that the good God never brought into this world a racial fanatic or a class snob, and that we make the young both. It is only necessary to see the children playing to realise that they do not care for races or classes - and by the World Scout Order to try to prevent the corruption of the young, to allow them to be 'children of the world' as we have become 'men of the world,' by much unnecessary pain and suffering." (18)
Socialism and Women's Suffrage
Francis Vane developed radical political opinions during this period. He advocated reform of the House of Lords and condemned the sale of honours for party funds. He became friendly with pacifists and began advocating radical causes. Vane also attended the seventeenth International Peace Congress in London in 1908. (19)
In September 1908, made a speech where he was considering becoming a socialist after reading the writings of H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. "Of course, if the nationalisation of the sources of wealth is wrong in itself, an evil principle, then we must oppose it. But is it wrong? I post my Socialistic letters and bank my Socialistic savings in the GPO. I travel by Socialistic trams; in Germany, by Socialistic trains; and in Italy I smoke Socialistic cigars and eat Socialistic salt. Old men and women are supported by a Socialistic Poor Law, and children are educated in Socialistic schools. If the principle be wrong in itself, then all these things are wrong. If not wrong, why should we who are Whigs refuse to fall into line with the people by going the whole Socialistic bog, as our ancestors did before us." (20)
Vane also became a supporter of women's suffrage. In a letter to Edwy Godwin Clayton of the Men's League For Women's Suffrage he explained why: "I am sincerely in favour of it (Women's' Suffrage) because I believe women's influence will do much to pacify and mollify politics, and I am not so much opposed to the active policy as some because I know enough of history to make it clear to me that no great cause is won without something being smashed whether it be corrupt nobles, inconvenient Houses of Parliament or plate glass windows. In fact, no cause is worth fighting for unless there are some enthusiasts self-sacrificing enough not only to become martyrs for it in the ordinary sense but that more difficult kind of martyrdom which is represented by what their enemies would call making fools of themselves for it."
He added that once women had the vote, they would help to create a more tolerant society. "It is commonly said by the proud father and mother 'We are sending our son to school (at say, ten years) to harden him, to make a man of him'. Now, with a varied and somewhat lengthy experience of the world especially in administration, I am convinced that men, let alone boys, require softening, humanising, rather than hardening. So it appears to me that what the parent says above is wrong fundamentally and in this respect, possessing a wide knowledge of the Continent, I am convinced that the hardening theory is but little known there. The mother's influence is in fact, a dominant one up to the boy's entrance into manhood but no one has ever been bold enough to say that an Englishman is a braver fighter or a harder worker or a more finished gentleman than a foreigner of similar rank - yet many who have known the foreigner well and intimately have found him a kindlier man than the average Englishman. If no better reason existed therefore for 'Votes For Women', I should be in favour of it because it may help to regain the mother's rights over the boys and thereby make our politics, national and international kindlier politics and our world a pleasanter place." (21)
He became close to Sylvia Pankhurst and George Lansbury. At a meeting of the East London Federation of Suffragettes in November 1913 chaired by Zeli Emerson, he offered to form a People's Army "for the projection of militant suffragettes and labour unionists". According to one newspaper: "The Boer veteran explained that he proposed to establish a labour training corps. Waving aloft a huge knotted club, Sir Francis said he was prepared to use that weapon wherever he saw women injured and in labour disputes, or wherever the oppressed needed aid. The general staff of the organization will be drawn from officers who have seen war, and both men and women are eligible for the ranks." (22)
However, after leaving the meeting Emerson was badly beaten by police carrying clubs. Suffering from a fractured skull, she was carried away by sympathisers. (23) Five days later, The New York Times reported: "Zelie Emerson, the well-known suffragette of Jackson, Michigan, is lying seriously ill from concussion of the brain, the result of injuries suffered in the riot at Bow Baths, in the East End of London.. When the police tried to arrest her a violent fight with sticks of and clubs took place, in the course of which Miss Emerson was knocked down with a blow to the head." (24)
Vane gave instructions to two former army officers to organise the People's Army as he was about to go to Italy. In a letter sent to Norah Smyth later that month he apologised for their behaviour: "I am sorry that the two officers I mentioned have failed you - but to be just I had told Captain Hayter that he would not be required until after Christmas when he promised to join you in this scheme. You see I did not know your rapid methods, and my interview with the Trade Unions led me to suppose that they would move slowly but surely... I had a card from Mr. Lansbury asking me to come back as soon as possible. But I cannot until after Christmas." (25)
Vane also wrote to Sylvia Pankhurst and praised a recent mass meeting held by the East London Federation of Suffragettes. He said he was still working on the idea of a People's Army. "I have no doubt Captain Ivrea will come in on my staff, as will Captain Hayter when we have got a little further." He also said he would send a Captain White to meet Pankhurst. As she pointed out in The History of the Women's Suffrage Movement (1931): "None of his officers ever appeared. Captain White was another broken reed who offered much and did nothing." (26)
First World War
In July 1914, Francis Vane published his anti-war pamphlet The Other Illusions, contrasting the glamorous image of war with its horrific, sordid, and immoral reality, and advocating socialism. In this pamphlet these questions have been taken in the order of their importance. (a) The Illusion of the romance of War and its glamour. (b) The Illusion that War has an ennobling effect on nations and on individuals. (c) The Illusion that conquering nations obtain what is called prestige by armaments. (d) The Illusion that Peace is necessarily dull and commonplace. (27)
However, on the outbreak of the First World War Vane supported the war and encouraged recruitment. He was appointed a major in the 9th service battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers in Dublin. In 1916 he published The Principles of Military Art, considering training, tactics, and morale, and urging conciliation of Germany. (28)
Captain Francis Vane was in temporary charge of Portobello Baracks and helped to suppress the Easter Rising in April 1916, but was appalled when he heard that one of his men, Captain J. C. Bowen-Colthurst had executed Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, a pacifist, and two journalists. Vane went to London and reported to the executions to Lord Horatio Kitchener. Colonel McCammond, the Portobello Barracks commander, returned from sick leave on 1st May, he removed responsibility for Portobello's defences from Vane and replaced him with Bowen-Colthurst. (29)
Arthur Lynch the MP for West Clare asked Henry Forster of the War Office whether he intended to utilise the services of Sir Francis Vane. He replied: "This officer served in a regimental capacity in a battalion of the New Army from September 1914, to September, 1915, when, as the result of most unfavourable reports as to his military capacity furnished by his commanding officer, his Brigadier, and his Divisional General, he was called upon to relinquish his commission and was gazetted out of the service in January, 1916. In view of these reports, it is impossible to employ him at home, still less abroad." (30)
Francis Vane explained why he had developed radical political opinions in an article in the Woman's Dreadnought. "I put aside all the flapdoodle we hear about the sin of rebellion? Where would most of the horror-stricken hypocrites who tell us that rebellion is sinful be now if their ancestors had never rebelled? As I told one of them recently, 'that but for our revolution he would be a serf (instead of a particularly wealthy stock-jobber), and probably I should have been his lord." (31)
Later Life
After the war he lived for several years in Italy, where he loathed Benito Mussolini and the fascists and their persecution of boy scouts. His first wife having died in 1922, he married in 1927 Kathleen Crosbie. His published several articles in numerous periodicals, and his memoirs, Agin the Governments: Memories and Adventures of Sir Francis Fletcher Vane (1929). Tim Jeal described Vane as "well-meaning, generous... determined to right wrongs, if eccentric and egotistical." (32)
Sir Francis Vane died on 10 June 1934 in St Thomas's Hospital, Lambeth, London, and was cremated on 15 June at Golders Green crematorium, London.
Primary Sources
(1) Sir Francis Vane, The Workington Star (25th September 1908)
The Democratic principle of equality has had as a chief opponent, Nature. No two babies born into the world have ever been born equal, on the American Constitution asserts all are. Therefore, personal equality is barred, by a crooked back, by a narrow brain, and the assumption of this equality offends the intelligence of every thinking man. But every thing man does not realise that the present social system is rotten to the core. Survival of the fittest! Yes, let the fittest survive, the principle of individualism – but we all know that they do not, and that, on the contrary, some of the ablest are at the bottom of the ladder and some of the stupidest are on the top.
A little while ago I was "chaffed" in my club in St James' Street for my liberal opinions. An old friend of mine said: "But how can you find friends among the working classes, how can you talk to them?" My reply was that in many working men's clubs I know well the tone of the conversation was much higher than in this exclusive institutions in St James Street – much more intellectual, and much more serious.
We all know that equality does not exist, yet Liberalism and the Progressive Party have accepted it. Fundamentally it is unsound, and therefore a cause of revolt, and suddenly comes in the Socialistic principle.
Now this principle, while accepting equality of opportunity, never admits equality as a basis of government. To place the right people in the right place is the aspiration of the Socialists today. Mr H. G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw will not contradict me…
For myself, not yet a Socialist, and a member of a Whig family, I wonder what ought to be done, what attitude I should take up. We have always been on the side of the people, not always agreeing, be it remembered, but always on their side.
Now, what ought to be our position respecting this great new movement of the people towards Socialism?
Of course, if the nationalisation of the sources of wealth is wrong in itself, an evil principle, then we must oppose it. But is it wrong? I post my Socialistic letters and bank my Socialistic savings in the GPO. I travel by Socialistic trams; in Germany, by Socialistic trains; and in Italy I smoke Socialistic cigars and eat Socialistic salt. Old men and women are supported by a Socialistic Poor Law, and children are educated in Socialistic schools.
If the principle be wrong in itself, then all these things are wrong. If not wrong, why should we who are Whigs refuse to fall into line with the people by going the whole Socialistic bog, as our ancestors did before us.
(2) Sir Francis Vane, letter to Edwy Godwin Clayton (5th January 1910)
I am sincerely in favour of it (Women's Suffrage) because I believe women's influence will do much to pacify and mollify politics, and I am not so much opposed to the active policy as some because I know enough of history to make it clear to me that no great cause is won without something being smashed whether it be corrupt nobles, inconvenient Houses of Parliament or plate glass windows. In fact, no cause is worth fighting for unless there are some enthusiasts self-sacrificing enough not only to become martyrs for it in the ordinary sense but that more difficult kind of martyrdom which is represented by what their enemies would call making fools of themselves for it...
It is commonly said by the proud father and mother 'We are sending our son to school (at say, ten years) to harden him, to make a man of him'. Now, with a varied and somewhat lengthy experience of the world especially in administration, I am convinced that men, let alone boys, require softening, humanising, rather than hardening. So it appears to me that what the parent says above is wrong fundamentally and in this respect, possessing a wide knowledge of the Continent, I am convinced that the hardening theory is but little known there. The mother's influence is in fact, a dominant one up to the boy's entrance into manhood but no one has ever been bold enough to say that an Englishman is a braver fighter or a harder worker or a more finished gentleman than a foreigner of similar rank - yet many who have known the foreigner well and intimately have found him a kindlier man than the average Englishman. If no better reason existed therefore for 'Votes For Women', I should be in favour of it because it may help to regain the mother's rights over the boys and thereby make our politics, national and international kindlier politics and our world a pleasanter place..
(3) Sir Francis Vane, The Truth (28th February 1912)
As to the World Scouts movement, I can leave it to the judgment of mankind. We base our work on the fact that the good God never brought into this world a racial fanatic or a class snob, and that we make the young both. It is only necessary to see the children playing to realise that they do not care for races or classes – and by the World Scout Order to try to prevent the corruption of the young, to allow them to be "children of the world" as we have "become "men of the world," by much unnecessary pain and suffering. For we were "children of the world" at first and cared nothing for these things."
(4) Hamilton Daily News (6 November 1913)
By a clever stratagem, which completely hoodwinked the large force of police sent to prevent her from speaking, Miss Sylvia Pankhurst was enabled to announce at the Bow Baths, in the east end of London, tonight the formation of a volunteer corps, organised under command of Captain Sir Francis Vane, a Boer War veteran, for the projection of militant suffragettes and labour unionists.
Miss Zelie Emerson presided over the meeting. Just as the meeting was called to order the statement was made that the residence of George Lansbury, former Socialist member of Parliament and a warm supporter of the militant suffragettes, was surrounded by police. The crowd rushed from the Baths and found a large number of foot and mounted police around Lansbury's house with a taxicab in front of the entrance. Mr Lansbury arrived on the scene and was uproariously greeted as he entered his home. The report was spread that the preparations portended the arrest of Sylvia Pankhurst.
The lights of the house were extinguished, and suddenly a woman rushed from the doorway and sprang into the taxi, which surrounded by mounted police, proceeded to Bethnal Green. Then Miss Daisy Lansbury, daughter of the ex-Socialist member, stepped out, much to his discomfiture of the police.
Meanwhile Miss Pankhurst entered the Baths practically unobserved. The only disorder was caused by an attack by the women and a few reporters, whom they suspected of being detectives Mr Lansbury and Sir Frances Vane followed Miss Pankhurst to the platform. The Boer veteran explained that he proposed to establish a labour training corps. Waving aloft a huge knotted club, Sir Francis said he was prepared to use that weapon wherever he saw women injured and in labour disputes, or wherever the oppressed needed aid.
The general staff of the organization will be drawn from officers who have seen war, and both men and women are eligible for the ranks…
When Miss Pankhurst left the meeting she was surrounded by a bodyguard of east enders, and made her escape after a lively battle with the police, who were compelled to draw their clubs. The crowd retaliated with sticks, and the result was that several of the belligerents were injured, among them Miss Emerson, who was knocked down and bruised about the head. She, too, escaped arrest, being carried away by sympathisers.
(5) Sir Francis Vane, The Other Illusions (July, 1914)
Many have written, more especially Bloch and Norman Angell, exposing the economic illusions in respect to the advantages of even successful War, but I am convinced that these arguments are in themselves not enough. By these, it is true, you detach a certain number of persons of the upper and middle classes from the warlike policy which all countries have pursued. What we, who know the absurdity of War, have to do, it seems to me, is to show that the contests between nations are neither glorious, nor adventurous, nor ennobling. The intellectuals and the commercially interested may be affected by showing up the economic fallacies, but the mass of the people-the majority of a bellicose upper class bred up in traditions of War; the majority of the middle class who see an easy way out of international competition by it, who know that in spite of anything else at least for the moment War benefits many of their class, contractors and the like; and the vast majority of the nation, the manual workers, who think that a campaign against a national enemy is the easiest means of escaping from the grinding toil and dullness of life as they see it-all these will be hardly affected by economic arguments. What we have to do is to dispel the Illusions which picture War as a gay, a gallant, and a coloured adventure, while at the same time showing the old, and the young, that Peace can be made all these, if they have been taught to understand it.
We must show that the glamour which surrounds War is false, an illusion which has descended from past conflicts, some of which were those of principle; and we must make it clear that Peace is not necessarily commonplace and dull, but is only made so by the present egregious industrial system.
In this pamphlet these questions have been taken in the order of their importance. (a) The Illusion of the romance of War and its glamour. (b) The Illusion that War has an ennobling effect on nations and on individuals. (c) The Illusion that conquering nations obtain what is called prestige by armaments. (d) The Illusion that Peace is necessarily dull and commonplace.
Neither the schools nor the churches have attempted to teach these things; they have, as a rule, been hobbling long after modern thought, as equity hobbles after law. But it was President Wilson of the United States who changed an old lie into a modern truth, for he said that if "we want Peace we must prepare for Peace."
How are we really preparing for Peace? I am a Peace man, and have proved this in War and after a War, yet nothing has made me so despondent in this matter as attending Peace Congresses. There, while many noble-minded men and women attend them, a number of the delegates are old women-of both sexes. They are always quite nice old women, but not virile enough to carry through a manly peace policy. In this connection an experience of mine in a village school is recalled.
A gentleman had offered to give a lecture on the beauty of Peace to the school there, and these wretched youngsters were kept in on a hot day to listen to it. When the writer arrived he found a stout and perspiring gentleman preaching of the commercial attractions of the commonplace existence to an audience, part of whom were asleep and the remainder clearly in revolt against the lecturer's propositions. In fact, he spoke without knowledge of the working of the child mind, for while he knew something of Peace, he knew nothing whatever of War, and, moreover, he certainly did not recognise that lie could not succeed in his excellent work until he had uprooted from the minds of the youngsters the false teachings that had been planted there as to what War really is. At the end of the lecture I whispered to the headmaster that this excellent person had probably made more warriors than pacifists. I think he agreed with me.