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​It may be as difficult, or at least nearly so, for a citizen of the modern world to imagine all the peoples of the United Kingdom coming together and working together as it was a century ago. There are today, as there were then, four distinct nationalities, each with their own political agenda, culture, religious preference, independence movement, and prejudices towards one another. Additionally, each country has now and had then men and women; upper, middle, and lower classes; rural and urban areas; militants and pacifists. It seems largely inconceivable, when a century ago Ireland became independent and just last year Scotland very nearly did as well, that such a nation could synthesize and synergize for any calling. And yet against all odds, upon the outbreak of the Great War, the United Kingdom came together for different reasons but the same purpose. Catriona Pennell explains in her book A Kingdom United; Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland how the many different social and political entities within the United Kingdom synthesized their efforts in order to fight the Great War upon its outbreak and through the early months.
​Above all else, Pennell shows that what brought the many-faced United Kingdom together was the presence of a common enemy found in Germany. Germany, as the successor state to Prussia, had inherited the centuries-old legacy of militancy and aggression. As Germany grew to be the juggernaut of Continental Europe, both economically and militarily, it became convenient and more fashionable to view the new power with suspicion, which peaked with the outbreak of the war. Pennell describes two kinds of fear of the Germans; the stories of what was real told by survivors, and the stories that circulated either by propaganda or by word of mouth which mixed fact with fiction. Indeed, the true atrocities which the German army committed in Belgium and in France were extreme. Pennell gives account after account of Belgians, women especially, becoming the victims of rape and mutilation as “Germany [ran] th[e] war…without the faintest regard for any law human or divine.” (Pennell, 128) Citizens of the United Kingdom were rightfully outraged at hearing these stories upon meeting the Belgian people who lived through these atrocities. In many instances, Pennell shows, this bred gossip, semi-truths, and paranoia around the Germans, which made it very difficult for a German, either naturalized or alien, to live in the United Kingdom during the war years. One of the predominant myths contemporary to the war was that all Germans in the United Kingdom “were really spies in disguise…busy collecting information…about what was happening; fortifications; everything of that sort.” (Pennell, 98) As a result of this, Pennell further explains, many Germans were dismissed from their work places and subjected to verbal and physical violence and some Anglicized themselves for protection. (Pennell, 100) Mutual fear of German military intentions, Pennell shows, is the foremost metaphorical glue which bound the United Kingdom together during the Great War.
​While the Germans were the predominant external reason the citizens of the United Kingdom bound together in 1914, it is essential that Pennell extrapolates upon the social structures within the country. In 1914 and the years prior, there were significant social and political upheavals such as the push for women’s suffrage and the independence movement in Ireland, which were put on pause for the war. Pennell explains why these important works were halted in order to support the oppressive regime and what these activists hoped to accomplish.
​Among the four countries that then comprised the United Kingdom, Ireland was the most independent-minded and the least inclined to operate within the British imperial system. Anti-British sentiments made it incredibly difficult to raise enthusiasm in Ireland for the war. While the Welsh and the Scottish recruitment was not, perhaps, as high as in England itself, Pennell shows that this has far more to do with the local economies being more agrarian and the populations smaller than it has to do with animosity towards the England-driven politics and military. (Pennell, 156) Indeed there were far more attempts to accommodate the various British nationalities than there were to accommodate the Irish. (Pennell, 155) However, the Irish, at the onset of the Great War, would elect to support the Entente side and would fight with the British. Their reasons were much the same as they were in the rest of the United Kingdom. Primarily there was a fear that the Germans would take control of the British Isles, thus extinguishing Irish hopes of independence. (Pennell, 179) Secondly, Pennell explains that the Irish felt the same empathy for what those in “little Catholic Belgium,” had suffered at the hands of the Germans—the Catholic tie was extremely important, as it provided an Irish reason to fight, rather than a British one. (Pennell, 179) Therefore, though there was a great deal of protest against joining armed forces with their long-time oppressors in Britain, the Irish were determined to fight, all the same, on their own terms and for their own reasons. Pennell shows the fierceness of this position in the banner hung from Liberty Hall, Dublin, which read “We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser But Ireland.” (Pennell, 184) Though push for Irish independence seemed to have ceased as they took up arms with the British, it is vital to see that their actions were as Irish as they ever were.
​Women in the United Kingdom faced a very similar challenge as did the Irish at the outbreak of the Great War; they were both oppressed by the British government and were taking political strides at the time to rectify this abuse. However similar, the difference lied in that the Irish were able to push for home rule and were physically separate from their oppressors, while women do not have the same luxury; they are born to, raised by, and live amongst their oppressors. This would characterize the differences in their response to the outbreak of war. The social changes women worked for in this dynamic time included equality in the work place and the right to vote, but their work was also interrupted at the outbreak of the Great War. It was their sub-citizen class which, Pennell shows, made some women like Sylvia Pankhurst disagree “with the war” and unable to “bring herself to support the British government’s call for women’s war service when that same government still refused women full citizenship.” (Pennell, 84) Yet Pennell also describes how many women, like the Irish, were able to reconcile both supporting the war and holding true to their agenda. Two of the most militant groups working for women’s rights, the NUWSS and the WSPU agreed with the government to cease their “militant activities” until the end of the war and to aid in the war effort. (Pennell, 84) Pennell additionally describes how there were differing ideas on what it would mean for a woman to aid in the war effort. Some might work as nurses or seamstresses, or “as Violet Clutton recorded in her diary on 3 November women and girls could ‘serve their country best by leading quiet lives, thus setting an example of self-restraint and uprightness at home’.” (Pennell, 80) Therefore, Pennell shows two main responses by women to the outbreak of war. One was to be muted by the government; to sit at home and quiet their protests until higher order concerns had been taken care of. Many, on the other hand, used this men’s war as a way to show all the more clearly why equality was the necessary and obvious course of action.
​The years leading up to the Great War were years of great turbulence in the United Kingdom as well as across the globe. The United Kingdom was split into many factions along the lines of gender, nationality, social class, etc…which seemed to be irreconcilable before the war. However, the Great War produced a common and terrible enemy in the Germans, whom no self-respecting United Kingdomer could support. Though the barbaric Germans proved poor metaphorical glue in the long run, they did, encourage even the staunchest of political enemies to work together for a few months, as Catriona Pennell shows in her book A Kingdom United; Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland.

A must for anyone studying the declaration of the First World War in Britain