Startling scenes in this morning’s papers, that Mr Asquith has decided to bring in a bill to conscript the unmarried men who have not “attested” under Lord Derby’s scheme. This is a thunderbolt. We all believed that the Derby scheme had at any rate indefinitely postponed conscription. The thought of Britain having recourse to this worst of all tyrannies, makes me sick at heart.

29 December 1915. Diary entry of John Bruce Glasier, socialist and pacifist [Glasier Papers GP2/1/22]. This week’s war: 74.